Nvidia cancels GeForce Partner Program

Nvidia’s GeForce Partner Program has been cancelled. A message posted on Nvidia’s official blog has made it clear that the widely criticized program will cease to exist, while the GPU manufacturer refocuses efforts on the GeForce gaming platform instead. The post starts in a defensive manner:

A lot has been said recently about our GeForce Partner Program. The rumors, conjecture and mistruths go far beyond its intent. Rather than battling misinformation, we have decided to cancel the program.

With reports that important OEMs like HP and Dell were going to stay away from the GPP and speculation that it was affecting the manufacture of Kaby Lake-G laptops, it seems Nvidia was alienating some major players in the tech industry with the program. Furthermore, AMD took advantage of the situation by promoting the firm’s stance in regard to gamers having the right to choose and disregarded “anti-competitive conditions.”

The “Pulling the Plug on GPP” post attempted to further justify the program’s purpose and tried to add some positive spin on Nvidia’s business as a whole:

Most partners agreed. They own their brands and GPP didn’t change that. They decide how they want to convey their product promise to gamers. Still, today we are pulling the plug on GPP to avoid any distraction from the super exciting work we’re doing to bring amazing advances to PC gaming.

The GPP was introduced on March 1, 2018, so it has managed just over two months of existence before being cancelled. It’s a short-term fail for Nvidia, but in the long-term it’s a prudent move for any successful company to admit when a product or service isn’t working and to cancel it outright. At least Nvidia didn’t take 17 years to backtrack like Coca-Cola took with “New Coke.”

It’s not known yet how Asus will take the news, after the Taiwanese company recently rebranded devices using AMD Graphics cards under the new AREZ name.

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