The Indian eSports ecosystem is flourishing very rapidly and gamers are getting all the required support from leading tech brands and the gamers community. Western Digital has been always ahead in empowering gaming enthusiasts by bringing quality storage products to power up gaming PCs. But now taking one step ahead, Western Digital has launched a 14 day eSports tournament WD_BLACK Cup for gamers. This mega eSports tournament is the first-ever gaming event by Western Digital in India to provide an ideal platform for professional and emerging gamers to get noticed by winning this tournament. For this activity, Western Digital has partnered with AMD as well.
To bring more information for the gamers community, Rajeev Ranjan got a chance to talk to Jaganathan Chelliah, Director – Marketing, Western Digital, India. Jaganathan Chelliah spoke about all the aspects related to the event and how it will be a great opportunity for gamers in the dynamically evolving eSports ecosystem in India. Read below the excerpts:
Rajeev: How excited are you to bring this 14-day WD_BLACK CUP mega Esports tournament to the gamers’ community in India?
Jaganathan Chelliah: As a country having one of the world’s youngest population, the gaming market in India has immense potential to grow. This was further accentuated during the pandemic, when everyone was sitting at home and several youngsters took this opportunity to begin gaming – either as a way to de-stress or stay connected with their friends through gaming tournaments. Considering the rising number of young gamers in the country, we at Western Digital, are excited for the first-ever tournament organized for the ultimate gamers. With this collaboration for WD_BLACK CUP, we wish to bring the ecosystem together to promote the gaming community and celebrate the innovations in the space with a full-throttle experience.
Rajeev: How will WD_BLACK CUP play an instrumental role in further strengthening India's eSports ecosystem? How will this event provide a huge opportunity for passionate gamers who are looking for bigger gaming platforms in the post-COVID era?
Jaganathan Chelliah: Today’s gamers are on the lookout for an ultimate and wholesome gaming experience, which is more interactive, complex, social, and feels more personalised. In this respect, the WD_BLACK Cup will play a major role for passionate gamers as it features some of the best gaming influencers and Esports players as they fight it out for top honours across two tracks - the WD_BLACK Cup Invitational featuring Call of Duty Warzone and the WD_BLACK Cup Open event featuring Valorant.
WD_BLACK Cup Esports Tournament will further empower gamers to push their boundaries and experience competitive and immersive gaming. Not only that, the WD_BLACK Cup provides an exceptional platform for up and coming gamers to test out their capabilities and gain exposure by interacting with some of the best gamers across the country. The lockdown has been long and hard and most of the gamers had missed some stiff competition. So, WD_BLACK Cup provides the perfect opportunity as it is the ultimate networking zone aimed at further strengthening the gamers’ ecosystem in order to learn from each other and thrive.
Rajeev: Please brief about your collaboration with AMD for WD_BLACK CUP Esports tournament. How does AMD add an advantage which may boost the level of this grand event?
Jaganathan Chelliah: Western Digital and AMD have come together to host a 14 - day gaming marathon, the WD_BLACK™ CUP. Western Digital has been a pioneer in gaming storage solutions and with the launch of its recent WD_BLACK extended SSD portfolio, the brand is all geared up to help Esports gamers enhance their gameplay experience and adapt to the evolving gaming landscape led by the next generation of consoles. In line with Western Digital’s vision, gaming has been a key focus area for AMD as well. AMD’s Ryzene CPUs are best designed for gaming desktops and notebooks to provide an ideal experience. This collaboration is bound to help boost the gaming ecosystem for gamers.
Rajeev: Please brief about WD_BLACK Cup Open which is going to feature top Esports teams from across India. What about the winning prize for Valorant event which will be distributed among the top teams?
Jaganathan Chelliah: The WD_BLACK Cup Open event featuring Valorant is the second track part of the WD_BLACK Cup which will run from March 8th 2021 for a period of 14 days. The event is open to 128+ teams and expects to witness some of the top Esports teams and gaming communities across India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka taking part. The prize money is set at four lakh rupees for this track which will be handed over to the best team in South Asia.
Rajeev: Please shed some light on the WD_BLACK extended SSD portfolio? How does this product line help gamers to enhance their gameplay experience?
Jaganathan Chelliah: The WD_BLACK extended portfolio consists of two products -WD_BLACK SN850 and WD_BLACK AN1500 add in card. The WD_BLACK SN850 is designed with PCIe Gen4 technology ensuring a boosted speed not just while gaming but to the overall PC performance.
The recently launched WD_BLACK SN850 offers mindboggling read/write speeds of up to 7000/5300MB/s. To manage the thermals, it is especially designed with heatsink technology making sure that the game never stops and features customizable RGB lighting.
We also introduced WD_BLACK AN1500 NVMe SSD Add-in-Card especially for gamers looking to achieve next-gen performance in a current-gen setup. This fully bootable plug and play add-in card is one of the fastest PCIe Gen3 x8 solutions in the market allowing gamers to experience blazing fast read and write speeds up to 6500 MB/s and 4100MB/s respectively.
Further, we have P10 HDD designed for gamers looking to expand the potential of their console or PC by saving their game library in an on-the-go form factor. Additionally, the P10 Game Drive boosts the speed and overall performance and comes with a storage capacity of up to 5TB.
