Rightside (Nasdaq: NAME), today announced it has secured the .GAMES domain extension.
Rightside plans to launch .GAMES in Q3 2016, starting at a standard wholesale price of $12.00.
Donuts was the sole applicant for .Games, which is one of the jointly owned new gTLD domain extensions with Rightside.
There were 5 applicants for the new gTLD .Game, including Google and Amazon, which was won by Uniregistry in a private auction.
.Game which was originally scheduled to be launched late last year, will be launching into Sunrise starting this week. .Game will launch into the Early Access Program (EAP) on May 17th, and General Availability (GA) on May 24th with two price tiers a $300 registration, annual renewal rate or a $1,300 registration + annual renewal rate.
Based on other Rightside new gTLD extensions, I would expect premium .Games domains to carry premium prices.
In its press release announcing .Games “The .GAMES extension will offer gamers, publishers, game developers, and retailers the opportunity to distinguish themselves with short, relevant, and memorable web addresses. For example, a .GAMES domain name, such as Twitch.games, Zynga.games or yourname.games, enables a brand or individual to lock in a modern domain name and proudly claim their game identity online.”
“Rightside said it “believes .GAMES fits nicely into its portfolio of domain names like .LIVE, .SOCIAL, and .NEWS, which are being rapidly embraced to showcase popular Internet culture. For example, YouTube stars like Joe Rogan (1.85 million Twitter followers) use .LIVE to drive traffic to his stream and Al Roker now uses a Rightside domain, RokerMedia.live. People with major Periscope followings, such as Ryan A. Bell (Ryan.live) and Brian Fanzo (iSocialFanz.live) use the .LIVE domain to house all their accounts under a single brand, and they can quickly change where the domain points to make sure people have access to their content. In addition, traditional publishers like the Los Angeles Times, to Alphabet’s unfiltered.news, or Now This Media’s use of election.news have embraced TLDs to showcase themselves as source of current events, trends, and information.”
