Seagate has been marketing their gaming-focused storage products under the FireCuda brand over the last few years. With a focus on performance, these products have typically been flash-based and/or cater to the high-bandwidth peripherals market using Thunderbolt. Today, the company is introducing a couple of new hard-drive-based products focusing on capacity and the aspect that gamers seem to love (based on market demand) - RGB lighting.
The FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive is a 2.5" bus-powered external HDD complete with RGB lighting (customizable using Seagate's Toolkit software as well as Razer Chroma). It is available in capacities of 1TB, 2TB, and 5TB with MSRPs of $80, $110, and $180 respectively. Street prices are lower, as can be seen from product listings online.
Similar to Seagate's current bus-powered external HDD lineup, the new FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive also sports a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) Micro-B interface. While we haven't received official confirmation yet, it is likely that the new drives are also SMR-based like the Seagate Backup Plus line. One of the interesting value additions is the inclusion of Rescue Data Recovery services for three years in addition to the one year warranty.
The FireCuda Gaming Hub will become available in the market a little later - This is a full-fledged 3.5" HDD in a RGB enclosure. It has to be externally powered, which also allows the product to carry front-facing USB-C and USB-A ports (both 3.2 Gen 1 - 5Gbps) and act as a hub. The Rescue DRS value-addition is applicable to this product also. The product will be available in two capacity points - 8TB for $220, and 16TB for $400. The latter SKU is interesting from the viewpoint of the internal drive - this will probably be the first product to carry Seagate's consumer-focused 16TB HDD, as they do not have a BarraCuda 16TB in the retail market currently.
Gallery: Seagate Unveils FireCuda-Branded External HDD Solutions
