A total of $500,000 will be offered throughout the various tour events, with $300,000 of that representing the grand prize.

Sponsored by Sierra Entertainment, the 2007 CPL World Tour will focus on the competitive play of two Sierra-published titles: the Xbox 360 version of Monolith Productions' FPS F.E.A.R. and Massive Entertainment's alternate history PC RTS World in Conflict. F.E.A.R. originally hit the PC in late 2005, followed by the October 2006 Xbox 360 iteration and a PlayStation 3 edition due this week, both handled by Day 1 Studios. Meanwhile, the PC-based World in Conflict is slated for a Q3 2007 release.

"The CPL is proud once again to break new ground in e-sports by partnering with Sierra Entertainment and selecting both F.E.A.R. and World in Conflict as our featured games for this year's four-continent $500,000 World Tour," noted CPL founder and president Angel Munoz. "We are making a long-term commitment to these exciting and highly competitive new games and are working closely with Sierra to continue to raise the profile of professional video gaming and to enable increasing numbers of gamers to enter the professional ranks."

Despite a variety of professional gaming organizations, such as the CPL and Professional Gamers League of America, the majority of the worldwide competitive gaming circuit has yet to obtain the level of popularity such events garner in South Korea, where Starcraft tournaments can fill stadiums with tens of thousands of attendees.