NVIDIA is not just working on a new GPU. The company seems interested in innovating the way consumers purchase graphics upgrades. According to PCGamer, new information reveals the NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti and the Club GeForce program are both headed to consumers.
As the site reports, the GTX 1080 Ti was announced via a LinkedIn job description for a Senior Marketing Manager. Apparently, this position would require rewarding GTX 980 Ti owners with a “first spot in line for 1080 Ti pre-orders,” if they wished to pre-order. There’s also the “Step Up” program, which appears to be similar or related to the first spot offering.
A new owner’s program, Club GeForce, is also on its way. According to the listing, the program provides a free indie exclusive once per year, a free in-game item for a major game release once per quarter, beta access for Talos and NVIDIA content and hardware discounts on gear. There’s also weekly giveaways and prizes, such as free AAA codes, in-game currency, beta access to major titles, gaming accessories and golden tickets to events such as PAX or Blizzcon. Free game codes will also be sent out to users that contribute to bug reports or enhancement requests, active Share and GeForce foum users and users who rank both most negative and most positive on NVIDIA’s “sentiment tools.”
Then there’s the subscription-based Club GeForce Elite program, which has a fee of $10 USD per month. In exchange, users get a “rotating bundle of free games from our GFE app store,” which includes four games per quarter. There’s also a free GeForce PC cloud subscriptions service, as well as exclusive in-game gear.
Both Club GeForce and Club GeForce Elite seem geared around getting consumers interested in engaging with the GeForce brand, not just purchasing GPU upgrades. Incentive-based rewards programs are a standard offering in tech to begin with, but NVIDIA’s program may suggest a desire to gain a stronger hold on the market. As AMD and Intel lost market shares in Q3, NVIDIA swooped in with a 2.2 per cent gain. A subscription and rewards program could turn consumer interests further towards NVIDIA, especially as new hardware announcements and releases emerge in 2017.
