Seagate announced it will sponsor this year’s World Cyber Games Australian Tournament by providing Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives for all the gaming stations.

Featuring SATA interfaces and Native Command Queuing, the 7200 RPM drives are a perfect fit for the speed requirements of the official competition games and are able to deliver the processing performance required to play titles such as Gears Of War and Counter Strike 1.6, which contestants came up against during last year’s tournament.

“Modern gamers need high capacity and fast access speeds to get the most out of today’s games, especially with increasingly realistic graphics and complex narratives,” said Henk van den Berg, Seagate’s sales director for South Asia & ANZ. “The eleventh-generation Barracuda drives that will be used at the World Cyber Games in Australia have data transfer speeds of 3Gb/s to ensure gamers don’t experience interrupted images while competing.”

First held in 2000, World Cyber Games is a global festival devoted to sports conducted within cyberspace, or e-sports. More than a million people from over 70 countries participate each year, competing for the chance to be named world champion in one of 12 different gaming titles. World Cyber Games also offers the opportunity for technology experts and industry members to come together and discuss the future of e-sports and their cultural relevance.

The Australian National Finals will be held over three days in August and are expected to draw crowds of over 2000 spectators, eager to see who will represent Australia at the WCG Grand Final in November.

Held in Cologne, Germany, the Grand Final will feature up to 800 of the world’s best gamers as well as cultural events, technology seminars and hands-on gaming stations.