Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware I'm boxed last week some interesting news appeared surrounding Nvidia and the GeForce partner program it didn't quite make the cut in time for last week's episode of news corner but it is a pretty big story so he felt it kind of deserves its own separate video and more in-depth discussion so firstly full credit to Kyle Bennett from hard OCP for uncovering this story after a few weeks of hard work please go and read his story which talks at length about everything you need to know plus of course is always good to support the original authors of stories like this anyway this story or perhaps controversy begins with the NVIDIA GeForce partner program or GPP for short the GPP was quietly established by Nvidia as a new program for establishing partnerships with OEMs AIB etc to essentially work close with Nvidia on new products product launches marketing and so forth around two weeks ago after hard OCP began their investigation into GPP invidious director of partner marketing John people put up a blog post outlining the GPP in their words most of this blog post is pure and video marketing speak but a couple of lines are interesting firstly Nvidia claims the GPP is designed to ensure that gamers have full transparency into the GPU platform and software they're being sold and can confidently select products that carry the NVIDIA GeForce promise the blog post continues this transparency is only possible when Nvidia brands and partner brands are consistent so the new program means that we'll be promoting our GPP partner brands across the web on social media at events and more and GPP partners will get early access to our latest innovations and work closely with their engineering team to bring the newest technologies to gamers partners are signing up fast they see the benefit of keeping brands and communication consistent and transparent the program isn't exclusive partners continue to have the ability to sell and promote products from anyone partners choose to sign up for the program and they can stop participating at any time there's no commitments to make any monetary payments or product discounts for being part of the program so there's a couple of key things to note here firstly Nvidia mentions transparency several times but it's not clear what Nvidia is actually referring to is it transparency into who Nvidia partners with for the GPP does the GPP now provide transparency into the partnerships Nvidia have held with OEMs and AI BS for years either way as hard as you pay points out despite this transparency it's actually not clear at all what companies are part of the GPP the second interesting point is invidious statement that the GPP isn't exclusive in fact partners can continue to sell and promote products from anyone according to the blogpost and we'll get into that shortly and this is where the investigation begins now on the surface it doesn't sound like there is anything inherently wrong with the GPP it just sounds like a typical partnership arrangement between Nvidia and OMS delivery of both sides of mutual benefits like additional marketing and brand placement but when you look into the GP P and speak with the companies involved as Kyle did questions of anti-competitive and anti consumer behaviour arise while investigating the GP p carlton hard OCP spoke with seven companies none of which wanted to go on the record however they did speak anonymously about the GP P and according to Kyle all the people he spoke to had similar opinions about the programme Kyle summarizes the opinions as follows the terms of the GP p agreement are potentially illegal the GP P will hurt consumer choices and the GP P will hurt a partner's ability to do business with other companies like AMD and Intel these opinions stem from a key component of the GP p agreement document which Carl read but decided not to publish this component States that GP p partners must have their gaming brand aligned exclusively with GeForce in other words if a company like a soos wanted to join the GP p they would not be allowed to sell AMD graphics cards in there Republic of gamers products no more ROG branded Radeon video cards and no more ROG laptops with AMD graphics inside of course it is up to the partners whether they want to be part of the GPP and accept these terms nvidia isn't explicitly forcing anyone to sign up but there are some pretty significant consequences of not signing up specifically the GP p provides benefits to partners such as launch partner status high effort engineering engagements marketing development funds social media and PR support game bundling and more and you can start to see the problem here the GP epi requires participants to align their gaming brands explosively with GeForce and if they don't sign up to the program direct competitors that are part of the GP P will get special treatment from Nvidia so there is a pretty strong incentive for OMS and AIB s to sign up otherwise have been left in the dust by the dominant player in the graphics market and it allegedly goes beyond the terms outline in the GP p document some AR B's expressed concerns that if they do not sign up to the GP P Nvidia would restrict GPU allocations and preference GP p members instead this isn't in the GP p agreement itself but is allegedly happening through under the table agreements there are so many problems with this GeForce Partner Program it's hard to know where to begin the biggest issue is OMS and AIB s are essentially forced into signing up to remain competitive among Nvidia partners if they don't join the GP p there won't get benefits like marketing development funds or launch partner status and if a competitor does join that will receive an genuine advantage which puts anyone that decides not to join the GP P in a difficult and disadvantageous position and then on top of this Nvidia is requiring participants to align their gaming brands with chief force exclusively so these OMS and AIB partners that basically have to join the GP P to remain competitive now cannot use their gaming brand on AMD Intel or any other competitors products sure an ARB partner could technically still sell an AMD GPU under a non-gaming brand but the gaming brands are almost always the biggest and most attractive to gamers the GPP is essentially shoving invidious competitors into less attractive brands or out of an OEM sport folio entirely and again it'll be very hard for an OEM to compete among those in the Nvidia market without agreeing to do this the end result is less competition and less consumer choice and everyday buyer looking for a graphics card for gaming would see almost exclusively Nvidia products from partners that join the GPP ambi products will be pushed over to one side and bullied out of the market by an agreement that OMS and AI BS would find very difficult not to sign and there's quite a stark difference between what nvidia is saying publicly about the GPP and what the actual document allegedly states Nvidia claims the program is an exclusive yet the agreement asks for exclusivity with the partners main gaming brand Nvidia claims partners can stop participating at any time but in reality if they do they'll be putting themselves in a disadvantageous position Nvidia claims the program is about transparency but no one is saying which companies are actually part of the GPP this sort of behavior is a prime candidate for investigation by regulators Intel has been stung and stung hard by regulators in the US and Europe for anti-competitive conduct and I think they will find the nvidia geforce partner program of particular interest and the whole situation is a bit puzzling as well Nvidia already holds a dominant market position with their GeForce graphics products they are already the most popular brand among buyers they're essentially unopposed at the high end and aspects of their technology are ahead of their nearest competitor there is no need to force OMS into only selling Nvidia products buyers were already mostly buying in video stuff anyway and there really aren't any signs of that changing it's also a case like with Intel's rise to power of Nvidia finding themselves in a dominant position and rather than investing a ton of money into making better products they've decided to come up with ways of crippling their competition instead and it's not the first time we've seen these sort of practices within video game works has famously been a source of angst among the gaming community with Nvidia partnering with game developers to integrate their effects that mostly crippled performance on AMD GPUs and sometimes hurt Nvidia performance - while providing little visual benefit hair works for example notoriously overused tessellation to harm AMD performance while AMD's competing technology tress effects actually provided better performance on both Nvidia and AMD Hardware tress-fx was an open technology that didn't really gain much traction while nvidia signed partnerships to ensure hair works was used instead and ambi are clearly concerned about the GPP as they were the ones that shopped around this story in the first place as hard OCP acknowledges it's always interesting when a company pitches people like us with negative stories on competitors it doesn't happen too often but when it does someone at the company is usually pretty annoyed with the practices of their competitor and these lots of practices end up holding every consumer in the long run not just one side or one fan base and they really have no place in the market competition is healthy and we're all a bit sick of companies abusing their dominant position to further their own interests rather than using it to create a vibrant hardware landscape let us know what you think of the GeForce Partner Program in the comments below I'm very interested to hear what you guys think of invidious dodgy practices to say the least like subscribe do all that fun stuff and consider 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