A few days ago, NVIDIA has introduced the GeForce Partner Program (GPP), an initiative that should fill the gap between NVIDIA and the companies that produce add-in cards or system based on its technology. NVIDIA will not require to join the program, however being part of the program will get the participants a lot of benefits.

According to NVIDIA, if you will be part of the GeForce Partner Program, you might be promoted across the web on social media, during events and more. All the GPP partners will get early access to latest products and might work closely with the engineering team as well. In other words, NVIDIA isn't offering free promotions but they are teasing partners that will not join the GPP.

If you think that these benefits might not seem a big deal, there is something underlaying that you are missing. Every company promotes their products over social media or during local events and such marketing activities are usually quite expensive. Furthermore, if a company can access new technologies before others, they could reduce the cost of making new products.

In order to join to the program, the manufacturer has to follow some steps. HardOCP has reported that NVIDIA will require its partners to have their "Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce". Speaking about ASUS' portfolio, we all know that there are ROG STRIX graphics cards available for NVIDIA as well as AMD. If ASUS would like to join to GPP, they should keep the STRIX gaming brand only for NVIDIA and probably create a new gaming brand for all the other products.

According to a post on Neogaf, it looks like that ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI are already part of the GeForce Partner Program. At the moment there isn't any confirmation, however a few days ago we have published a news about the upcoming Gigabyte RX 580 Gaming Box. Although this product looks 100% similar to the GTX 1080 Gaming Box, it doesn't belong to the AORUS series. The exterior part as well as the box are exactly the same, but since it packs an AMD graphics card the AORUS name has been removed. At the moment we don't know if this is the first step in that direction by Gigabyte, however we believe it a curious coincidence.

While this program might reduce the gap between NVIDIA and the companies that produce add-in cards or systems based on its technology, on the other hand it might create a sort of monopoly.



Source: HardOCP