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GeForce Partner Program Impacts Consumer Choice

5150Joker said:
Honestly who cares if it says aorus or not on the box? It’s got the word “GAMING” emblazoned on there. If this is the impact of GPP then I’d say NVIDIA is wasting their money.
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You can't be serious. You really think removing all custom branding from anything not NVIDIA won't affect customer choice at all?
 
5150Joker said:
Honestly who cares if it says aorus or not on the box? It’s got the word “GAMING” emblazoned on there. If this is the impact of GPP then I’d say NVIDIA is wasting their money.
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It's called branding. Branding is important. If branding wasn't important, companies wouldn't all be spending boatloads of money creating and promoting branding. If branding wasn't important, nVidia wouldn't be using this program to hijack the branded lines of all the different companies. Branding works and branding makes money.
 
I've been getting into the RGB craze myself a little bit, and just recently purchased an Aorus branded Gigabyte mobo with RGB (which I love btw). So I was leaning towards getting an Aorus branded video card when I upgrade from my GTX970... chances are I was going to go NVidia anyway, but this sort of thing just pisses me off.

If they still make an RGB / "Aorus" version with AMD, just without the Aorus label, then I guess I don't care *too* much. But to the uninformed consumer who doesn't check all the details, this is a shady blow, because I would think Aorus would come up as natural search results of just someone casually looking, and there has already been a lot of marketing behind it.
 
So it looks like you can still advertise other products as gaming, just not under your gaming brand.

Nividia must be thinking they're carrying these gaming brands with their performance and marketshare, and they're not wrong unfortunately.
 
Gigabyte may have violated the terms of the GPP by putting the word gaming on the AMD box.
Something to consider.
 
If Nvidia take Aorus, then why doesn't Gigabyte launch a Radeon brand equivalent and call it something fancy? Problem solved.
 
Rvenger said:
If Nvidia take Aorus, then why doesn't Gigabyte launch a Radeon brand equivalent and call it something fancy? Problem solved.
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The argument is it would cost them money but they’re getting a kickback from Nvidia for Aorus via MDF so theoretically it should free up money they spend on Aorus towards AMD. People keep acting like this is a zero sum game. Also, what’s stopping AMD from giving Asus, MSI and Gigabyte MDF for AMD branded gaming cards? Clearly the word “gaming” isn’t omitted from marketing material going by that Gigabyte ad.
 
Rvenger said:
If Nvidia take Aorus, then why doesn't Gigabyte launch a Radeon brand equivalent and call it something fancy? Problem solved.
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EDIT: PLEASE DO NOT APPLY MY ANALOGY BELOW TO THE ENTIRE SUBJECT OF GPP. THIS IS ONLY TO HIGHLIGHT THE IMPORTANCE AND VALUE OF BRANDING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES AS I WAS SPECIFICALLY REPLYING TO.

You are not thinking of branding as valuable IP, and it very much is. Brands costs tons of resources to build and establish. Say you have a shiny new $100,000 car, and you use it to take me and a buddy to work every day. Well, I start making a lot more money than the other passenger and tell you, that I am not longer going to use your car service, unless you kick the other guy out of the car because I no longer want to ride with him? Being seen in the car with him diminishes my standing. You are welcome to purchase another car, and continue to deliver him to work, but he can no longer ride with me, in YOUR car. No biggy right, you just need to buy another car. Problem solved, right?
 
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5150Joker said:
If that guy was paying me a $1000 per ride vs the other bum that can only pay $50, I’d tell the other guy to take an Uber.
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You are fully missing my analogy and how it pertains to branding and intellectual property, but you are actually using this example to further explain the anti-competitive nature of GPP. AMD gets kicked out of the car. Bingo.
 
Rvenger said:
I see it as...

Ford = AMD cards
Lincoln = Nvidia cards


More people buy Fords than Lincolns...so moot point.

This sounds like a way for Nvidia to charge more money like the founders edition in my opinion.
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You have totally missed the point as it pertains to branding and IP. Reading is fundamental. I edited my post to make it more clear as to what exactly I am replying to as quoted.
 
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5150Joker said:
If that guy was paying me a $1000 per ride vs the other bum that can only pay $50, I’d tell the other guy to take an Uber.
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And then the guy who was paying you $50 loses his job because his only way to work now is by bicycle and the guy paying $1000 decides he no longer needs to pay $1000 to keep the other guy out of the car and decides your ride is only worth the original $75 he was paying with the $50 guy.

So the owner of the car was getting $125, they were then getting $1000, and in the future they get $75.

Short term gain for the guy with the car, long term for the guy paying $1000. In this analogy you have to account for these being the only two people that can ride in your car, you can't just go out and find someone to cover that $50 that you've now lost.

The whole point is that it's monopolistic, NVIDIA has no right to the brands of these companies. It would be a non-issue if GPP was to have GeForce displayed more prominently on "gaming branded" products, but they're using their dominant position right now to force these companies to outright cut out products that they've marketed under those brands already. It's a little ironic, NVIDIA can't possibly view these brands as more valuable than their own GeForce brand, right?

And now Gigabyte is boldly saying that their gaming product isn't meant to be marketed as "gamer focused."
 
Kinda sad to see this happening. An Branding is important for the most non techcustomers.

A quick search (for some reason the site is offline now) AORUS on Google gives me the result

"AORUS | Enthusiasts' Choice for PC gaming and esports"

you see that? The name is associated with Enthusiasts etc. and a lot of people want to buy "high quality" stuff.

Added to that the branding Aorus gets a ton of ads that contribute to the fact that this branding is associated with good gaming cards. Creating a new Branding and competing the own internal one is not only bad it wont really work you have to start from ground up and also put a lot of money into it. Even if they succed in doing so people will probably still prefer the aorus one because it was there before the "new" one.


I hope the EU does something against this bullshit. I already heard from somepeople who sent complains to the EU Commission (yes you can email them and tell them about this), they also gave Intel a fine for their dirty Dell Deal back in the 2000s.
 
Thanks Kyle for patiently explaining again and again how this program impacts consumer choice even though companies remain technically allowed to sell AMD cards and create their own gaming brands for it.

About the car analogy, I think I have a better one.

Assume you (and your competitors) have a shiny new car which cost you $100,000 and use it to drive people around for ride-sharing companies, let's call them U and L. Company U has 75% market share and L has 25% share. Now U comes up with this "generous offer" to all drivers:

We will offer you marketing money to advertise your services, and give you preferential access to the most lucrative rides, on the condition that you reserve a vehicle exclusively to U customers.​

What will you do?
  • If you decline and your competitors accept, then they have a significant edge over you in 75% of the market (classic prisoner's dilemma).
  • You could accept and buy another $100,000 car for L customers, but that is very expensive and maybe not possible to afford.
  • Or you can buy a $1,000 car for L customers, which will cause people to associate L with low-quality rides. In either case you now have two cars to maintain.
  • Or you can stop doing business with L altogether.
And now replace U and L with NVidia and AMD, car/vehicle with gaming brand, and ride with GPU. How anybody could not see the anti-competitive nature of this "offer" is beyond me.
 
Creating a whole new image for a product from scratch is pretty hard considering some of these companies have spent decades working on the same brand, having to start over might make or break you. It would be like if you had a logo for 10+ years then because of some law suit you had to stop using it. You could lose up to 20% of your business just because you had to change the logo and the new one is not as good or people think you sold the business or something.
 
Rvenger said:
I see it as...

Ford = AMD cards
Lincoln = Nvidia cards


More people buy Fords than Lincolns...so moot point.

This sounds like a way for Nvidia to charge more money like the founders edition in my opinion.
Click to expand...

Hello, I'm Ford. I buy Nvidia and AMD engines and parts to use in my Ford's and Lincoln's as I see fit. Today one of my engine suppliers called me up and told me my Lincoln brand can only be used with their engines.
 
I'm one of those guys that will sit back and wait for all the facts to reveal themselves before being 100% convinced. I never doubted Kyle, but I was also not convinced... if that makes sense. All these news sources and recent findings are only bolstering what the story says, though. While my discerning mind is still not "convinced", it's getting harder not to be. Good job breaking the story!
 
Gigabyte could've put the issue to rest if they just said they used a budget label on their cheapest gaming box. There is no "GTX 1060 GAMING" box (not Aorus) and no "AORUS RX Vega" box (not GAMING). They could have claimed the label was based on GPU tier, they had plausible deniability.

Instead they made themselves look shady and dug a deeper hole by claiming a gaming box is not meant for gaming when it literally says GAMING in the title and description.
 
Maybe this will help some that are not yet convinced..


Since publishing the story, all of Bennett's contacts have gone silent including Nvidia. My own follow-up to his investigation is stalled. I'd secured a commitment from a few companies to speak off the record, but they have also gone dark. Prior to that happening I had two brief conversations that made it obvious the program was troublesome, to put it mildly.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasone...ed-with-geforce-partner-program/#69df53f4c6a1
 
No gamer should buy the cards from Gigabyte then. I certainly won't be.
 
So, Nvidia basically took over all premium gaming brands, and kicked AMD out. Good for them/s might be worth shit in the end. Once mining dies out, it will be back to basics anyway.. the question will always be will Nvidia cut their profit enough... I think we can count AMD to persue an aggressive pricing strategy.
 
You guys are just snowflakes. Lots of nerd rage in this thread. We are in a capitalist society and any company worth its salt should use all legal tools in its arsenal to grow their business and increase profits. GPP is simply a business relationship between Nvidia and its AIB partners. Nvidia is paying for something which the AIB partners are willing (regardless of the reason) to provide. This does not not illegally preclude or prevent the sale of AMD cards. Nvidia is using its economical and market share muscle to gain more competitive advantage. What is wrong with that? AMD is free to pay more than Nvidia and "buy" the AIB gaming brands. But obviously that cannot happen since AMD is so far behind in performance and probably lacks the necessary financial resources.
 
I see no issues when a company uses legal tools to make their products much more attractive than the competition. What you people are calling limits on consumer choice is simply the free capitalist market. Nvidia is making their cards much more attractive and associated with performance than AMD. What on earth is wrong with that?
 
Nvidia_ATI said:
You guys are just snowflakes. Lots of nerd rage in this thread. We are in a capitalist society and any company worth its salt should use all legal tools in its arsenal to grow their business and increase profits. GPP is simply a business relationship between Nvidia and its AIB partners. Nvidia is paying for something which the AIB partners are willing (regardless of the reason) to provide. This does not not illegally preclude or prevent the sale of AMD cards. Nvidia is using its economical and market share muscle to gain more competitive advantage. What is wrong with that? AMD is free to pay more than Nvidia and "buy" the AIB gaming brands. But obviously that cannot happen since AMD is so far behind in performance and probably lacks the necessary financial resources.
Click to expand...

so was the business relationship between intel and "insert oem here" that kept amd out of their products in the k8 vs netburst era that lead to intel paying amd $1.5b and numerous fines for intels anticompetitive practices.

Nvidia is in a monopolistic position with greater than 70% of the market sales and is abusing their market power to keep amd out of the premium gaming and enthusiast brands thus securing their market share and sales .
 
Nvidia_ATI said:
You guys are just snowflakes. Lots of nerd rage in this thread. We are in a capitalist society and any company worth its salt should use all legal tools in its arsenal to grow their business and increase profits. GPP is simply a business relationship between Nvidia and its AIB partners. Nvidia is paying for something which the AIB partners are willing (regardless of the reason) to provide. This does not not illegally preclude or prevent the sale of AMD cards. Nvidia is using its economical and market share muscle to gain more competitive advantage. What is wrong with that? AMD is free to pay more than Nvidia and "buy" the AIB gaming brands. But obviously that cannot happen since AMD is so far behind in performance and probably lacks the necessary financial resources.
Click to expand...

Nvidia_ATI said:
I see no issues when a company uses legal tools to make their products much more attractive than the competition. What you people are calling limits on consumer choice is simply the free capitalist market. Nvidia is making their cards much more attractive and associated with performance than AMD. What on earth is wrong with that?
Click to expand...

Funny that you mention "legal" and yet it is the legal aspect which is in serious doubt. A company using its larger share of the market to push out it's competitor is pretty much not legal.
 
maxius said:
so was the business relationship between intel and "insert oem here" that kept amd out of their products in the k8 vs netburst era that lead to intel paying amd $1.5b and numerous fines for intels anticompetivie practices.

Nvidia is in a monopolistic position and is abusing their market power to keep amd out of the premium gaming and enthusiast brands
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I knew someone will bring up this example. It is a strawman argument and a very different action by Intel vs Nvidia and you know it. Intel flat out paid partners and said they must not use AMD. Nvidia on the other hand is not doing that at all. AIBs are free to sell AMD cards and even advertise them as gaming products. The only thing is AMD cannot be sold under the premium gaming brands. But you already know this but choose to be biased against Nvidia.
 
Nvidia_ATI said:
I knew someone will bring up this example. It is a strawman argument and a very different action by Intel vs Nvidia and you know it. Intel flat out paid partners and said they must not use AMD. Nvidia on the other hand is not doing that at all. AIBs are free to sell AMD cards and even advertise them as gaming products. The only thing is AMD cannot be sold under the premium gaming brands. But you already know this but choose to be biased against Nvidia.
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so using a contract to lock out your competition is and secure your monopoly is legal?! please pass me what you are smoking :)
 
FearTheCow said:
Funny that you mention "legal" and yet it is the legal aspect which is in serious doubt. A company using its larger share of the market to push out it's competitor is pretty much not legal.
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Give me a break! AMD is not being pushed out. AIB partners are free to sell AMD cards to their hearts content. This online rage is much ado about nothing.
 
AMD is not being locked out and you know it. This is simply blowing things out of proportion. It has been said countless times in this thread that AIBs can sell AMD cards as gaming products but it appears your interpretation is very faulty
 
Nvidia_ATI said:
Give me a break! AMD is not being pushed out. AIB partners are free to sell AMD cards to their hearts content. This online rage is much ado about nothing.
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So a brand that a company used to define their premium/enthusiast products and they used this branding for lines from amd and nvidia. now in order to get the latest nvidia gpu allocation and nvidia help in board design they must sign this contract that states they can only sell nvidia cards under their premium/enthusiast products branding. now in order to sell amd cards they have to come up with completely new branding for their premium/enthusiast cards.... yeah nothing to see here move along.... i await the usage of the hammer for some of these nvidia apologists!
 
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Nvidia_ATI said:
AMD is not being locked out and you know it. This is simply blowing things out of proportion. It has been said countless times in this thread that AIBs can sell AMD cards as gaming products but it appears your interpretation is very faulty
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If AMD was not being locked out of AIB's existing branding we would have seen that by now from credible sources (for example the AIB partners) all of which are conspicuously quite.

Silence often speaks louder than words.
 
Nvidia_ATI said:
I knew someone will bring up this example. It is a strawman argument and a very different action by Intel vs Nvidia and you know it. Intel flat out paid partners and said they must not use AMD. Nvidia on the other hand is not doing that at all. AIBs are free to sell AMD cards and even advertise them as gaming products. The only thing is AMD cannot be sold under the premium gaming brands. But you already know this but choose to be biased against Nvidia.
Click to expand...

Threatening to cut off supplies of chips as well as cut off engineering help regarding those chips as well as cut off advertising dollars if the companies do not turn over their established gaming brands to nVidia is somehow not extortion? You should look up the definition of extortion since you don't seem to understand what it is. Extortion is illegal.
 
maxius said:
So a brand that a company used to define their premium/enthusiast products and they used this branding for lines from amd and nvidia. now in order to get the latest nvidia gpu allocation and nvidia help in board design they must sign this contract that states they can only sell nvidia cards under their premium/enthusiast products branding. now in order to sell amd cards they have to come up with completely new branding for their premium/enthusiast cards.... yeah nothing to see here move along.... i await the usage of the hammer for some of these nvidia apologists!
Click to expand...

Funny thing is that some of these Nvidia apologists have ancient Nvidia cards likely due to the excessive gpu prices these days. Do they not realize that it could get a lot worse with no competition?
One thing I don't get about the GPP program is that Nvidia will provide help designing boards but didn't AIB's already have the expertise to do that anyway?
 
Nvidia_ATI said:
AMD is not being locked out and you know it. This is simply blowing things out of proportion. It has been said countless times in this thread that AIBs can sell AMD cards as gaming products but it appears your interpretation is very faulty
Click to expand...
Small 'coincidences' are starting to add up.
Nvidia/aibs going dark, the Gigabyte box, AMD cards glitching out on MSI's website, Newegg/Amazon appears to be missing exclusively Aorus/ROG/Gaming AMD cards. All within the last few days.
 
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