In May, we compared two upcoming, at the time, new gTLDs, catering to the multi-billion dollar game industry: .Game vs. .Games.
Uniregistry was about to roll out dot .Game, and things looked equal; then, at launch, the pricing was unveiled to be a rather shocking $1 dollar per day.
In the weeks that followed, the .Game registration numbers increased, thanks to a Uniregistry campaign among game authoring companies, and during the E3 convention in California. The dot .Game EAP pricing was also revealed.
In July, RightSide announced the launch schedule of its dot .Games gTLD, outlining the prices for its premium domain names in the .Games domain extension.
Before General Availability started for .Games, we did a comparison test for .Games domains versus composite, two word .com “games” domains.
Preliminary poll voting among domainers revealed an interest in the RightSide extension as well.
On September 21, RightSide rolled out dot .Games to everyone, with a base “wholesale” price set at $15 dollars.
So who won the game of numbers, and why?
Clearly, registrations for .Game domains by Uniregistry were affected by the price of non-premium domains.
The annual fee for .Game domains is in the $360 dollar region, making the cost impossible to justify for average domain investors, and end-users that don’t represent large scale gaming studios. Even gamers looking to register lesser quality keywords or their Xbox handle, for example, were certainly not among the .Game crowd.
By pricing dot .Games domains, outside of the premium ones, as low as $15, RightSide has managed to win a large piece of the domain gaming market.
The most recent numbers, show that in 5 days, dot .Games has more than twice as many domains as dot .Game acquired in 5 months:
- Dot .Game – Uniregistry: 2,128 domains.
- Dot .Games – RightSide: 5,328 domains.
This doesn’t mean that .Games numbers will continue to increase at the same rate, as there are plenty of domains in a tiered pricing, perpetually.
Without a doubt, some of the best .Games keywords are priced between $100 and $1,200 annually, placing them in the same category as their .Game counterparts, and making them less affordable to the general public.
Dot .Games won the game on pricing, with the extra help of relentless public relations coverage by RightSide. They played the game extremely well, demonstrating that Registries willing to monetize their gTLDs should invest in public awareness and education.
It’s a game of money, after all.
Obviously the numbers below are very crude because it assumes non-premium domains, but the winner seems to be Uniregistry.
2128 domains * $360 per domain = $755,080 per year for .game
5327 domains * $15 per domain = $79,905 per year for .games
Edward – That’s a rather simplified approach. But faith in an extension that is overall priced 24 times more than a very similar extension can most definitely dissipate once renewal time arrives. I would be surprised if renewal rates exceeded 75% after year one for .Game.
And to keep things even, the .Games registration figures you posted don’t take into account the revenue from premium .Games domains that were sold before EAP, or the EAP earnings.
Good points, on top of that I just think the plural is superior here. I want Cooking.Games or Free.Games not the singular. If they keep the awareness campaign going I do think .games can make some serious money for Rightside.
Raymond – The singular vs. plural argument has its pros and cons, but I think the pricing factor determined this one.
.Game is for the gaming industry. Its primary use is to label an individual game, similar to the way .movie works for the film industry. The price point works well for the gaming industry, and the lower volume means that when a new game is ready for launch, the corresponding .game domain name is most likely available as well. See examples such as http://ember.game and http://divinity.game.