Things is also, in addition, is that the partners are said to have confirmed the information. In which case, we should know who they are.
Something that does bear consequence, is places like North America routinely get pished off at the lack of availability of hardware. On the flip side, they don't understand the complaints from the likes of Europeans at some of the hardware they get that they don't. Release timings and so forth.
Going back to the number of manufacturers not supplying retail, if it's the likes of ECS, Stores, Force3D, Jaton, Jetway and Diamond - with all due respect to them - who's going to notice outside of Asia and N.America ?
If it's a case that they have an agreement to supply under contract XFX so many units, or priority on availability. If XFX are demanding full stock due to sales, they need to honor the agreement. Or perhaps MSI or ASUS as they're doing some custom cooling mount. - who knows.
Last time we heard XFX were dropping nVidia or had a beef with them, it just turned out they were dropping exclusivity.
Some1 knows who's dropping these lines tho, cos there is conformation.