Well, if doubts ever existed, those have been somewhat dispelled in recent times, but this must be the final nail in the GPP coffin. Hopefully, it's also the proverbial nail to show customers Green, Red and Blue (seldom-remembered Intel was also a target) of what exactly NVIDIA's program entailed. NVIDIA found itself in a rather embattled field against tech publications and consumers alike when the first match was lit on what GPP was and what it forced NVIDIA partners to do with their brands. Turns out exclusively aligning them with NVIDIA products would give incredibly relevant advantages compared to partners who didn't, forcing an otherwise healthy ecosystem to converge on the dominant market player.

After around two months of story coverage, NVIDIA terminated the GPP program - begrudgingly so, and seemingly forgetting everything about the way things are meant to be played. However, some AMD partners had already announced some exclusive AMD-branded graphics cards, with new, market recognition-absent brands such as ASUS's AREZ and (it all seems to point that way) MSI's MECH 2 series of graphics cards. What were they to do in the wake of GPP's earlier-than-expected burial? These companies spent marketing and design funds to come up with new brands and designs, after all.UPDATE (22/05): ASUS informed us that the tweet which was the basis of the original report is not operated by ASUS. The company stated that it will continue to sell ASUS ROG and AREZ branded graphics cards side-by-side. ASUS is in the process of getting Twitter to take down the impersonating handle.

ASUS, for one, seems to have decided to bite the bullet on the funds devoted to the creation of the AREZ brand, declaring them lost in the process of reuniting its gaming brand under the ROG banner. But ASUS, having been a GPP partner (well, there's no way they weren't, right?), couldn't make a big story out of this: publicity on the GPP program is bad publicity, after all. As such, the company announced on its AREZ Twitter, at 9.50 PM of last Saturday, that the AREZ brand was coming to an end, with ROG being there to stay. This message slipped the radar until now since, well - AREZ really only had some 129 followers at the time of the tweet. Which just really goes to show how NVIDIA's ploy might have worked in muscling out market recognition of some of its competition's products.So much for AREZ, then. Thankfully, we barely even knew you.