In 2004, the World Cyber Games held a tournament in San Francisco, California, United States, the first tournament outside of its home country. At this stage, the prize pool was at US$2,500,000; with 642 players competing in the grand final.[11] The tournament has since been hosted in various countries around the world; including Singapore in 2005 and Monza, Italy in 2006 - at this time Microsoft became a major sponsor to the event, who would provide software and hardware for all the events through to 2008. In addition, all games played at the tournament would be based exclusively on Windows PC's or the Xbox console.[12][13]