Category: Video Games

On June 23, 2010, the domain name Cityville.com sold for $38,225 at Moniker. 

I recently came across the domain when I wrote about Zynga last week and how the game company has been buying up and developing ville-domains like Farmville.com and Petville.com – but at the time of the story, Cityville.com was parked and the name registered to Rob Holmes – founder & CEO of IPCybercrime whose company slogan is: ‘Your guys for undercover buys.”

TechCrunch broke the news Wednesday after Zynga issued a press release that Cityville would be launching soon and it would be the company’s most social game yet.  TechCrunch took a first look at the game and even provided some screen shots.

Here’s what Zynga had to say in their press release:

Zynga today announced the global launch of CityVille, a new social game allowing anyone anywhere to build their dream city from the ground up. Available in beta in the coming weeks, CityVille is debuting in five languages – marking the first international game launch for Zynga. CityVille is Zynga’s most social game to date with new features that allow players to build a city, interact with friends’ cities, and build franchises with the help of their friends. The game follows on the heels of the widely-successful launch of FrontierVille, which currently has 28 million monthly users. CityVille will be available in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish on Facebook at CityVille.com.

Now that Cityville is about to launch, what could be next for Zynga’s lineup of ‘ville’ games?

Not much is known about Zynga’s domain names other than the ones that have been developed.  Cityville.com was the biggest sale of a ville domain in 2010.  In 2008, Sportville.com was the biggest ville domain sale for $5,000.

Currently, Sportville.com is parked and the registrant’s information is private.

Farmville, Frontierville, Fishville, Yoville, Petville – are just a few of the popular games that Zynga has developed into some of the world’s most popular social games. 

You’ve probably heard of Farmville on Facebook and other games, but just how popular are these games.  According to TechCrunch, just five weeks after launching Frontierville the game reached 20 million monthly users, with around 6 million active daily users.

Bottomline, if you own domain names ending with ‘ville’, you might want to hang onto them.

Petville.com was launched in 2009 by Zynga, and the company acquired the domain name Petville.com from its previous owners for an undisclosed amount.  Visit Petville.com, and a message at the top of the site reads: ‘the content that was previously found at petville.com can now be found at ipawz.com’. 

Though Zynga owns Petville.com, Farmville.com and other ville domain names, it doesn’t own Fishville.com – which saw a spike in traffic according to Compete when the site launched in November 2009.   It appears Zynga and the owners of Fishville.com couldn’t come to an agreement, but Zynga is doing just fine – its Fishville game owns nearly all the top spots on Google, and the company does own the .net which it uses for the game’s home page.

2010 has seen only 1 publicly reported sale of a domain name ending in ‘ville’ – Cityville.com.  The domain name sold for nearly $40,000 in June at Moniker.  At the time of this story, the domain name is parked and registered to Rob Holmes of IP Cybercrime LLC – a company whose slogan is “Your Guys for Undercover Buys”.

About Zynga

“Every day millions of people interact with their friends and express their unique personalities through our games, which range from harvesting plants to baking apple pies to playing poker. Zynga was founded in January 2007 by Mark Pincus and named for his late American Bulldog, Zinga. Loyal and spirited, Zinga’s name is a nod to a legendary African warrior queen.”

Microsoft launched Kinect, the controller-free add-on for the Xbox, earlier this month.  The device is expected to be popular this holiday season and Microsoft aims to market it to a wide audience, not just hardcore gamers. 

The peripheral was first announced in June at E3 2009 under the code name: Project Natal, and once again, Microsoft, like many major companies who have launched products, doesn’t own the domain name: Kinect.com.

As one reader points out, Microsoft does however own Kinect.net and .org, but not owning the .com, means the company will be losing a lot of type in traffic.  Microsoft has also acquired Kinect.co.

About Kinect

Kinect.com has been registered since the nineties.  Today, the domain name Kinect.com re-directs to CAHG.com, a company that helps others grow their leadership brands.  Here’s a snippet from the CAHG web site:

Kinect is embracing our rapidly changing marketing environment. In fact, we are leading the way to give you and your brand the competitive advantage. We create strategic global e-solutions for healthcare professionals, patients, and consumers. Our expertise is in strategically partnering with clients and developing measurable market-moving interactive solutions at every phase of a brand’s life.

Kinect is widely recognized as a global leader in interactive marketing and promotion and serves as the Interactive Agency of Record for many market-leading brands in the US, Europe, Asia, South Africa, and the Middle East.

Considering the domain is difficult enough to spell, you’d think Microsoft would’ve gone with a different name.  Or even a different typo of the word ‘Connect’.  Microsoft did register xboxkinect.com which redirects to its kinect web site,

But in 2010, expect plenty of type-in traffic to head to Kinect.com and Connect.com.

Halo: Reach, which launched earlier this month “generated more revenue in a single day than any game or movie so far in 2010 in the U.S.” according to CNET News.  That’s been big news for Microsoft, dominating the headlines for weeks, but what hasn’t been news is the web address the company uses for its newest game title, which naturally many people will type into their browser.

Prospective buyers and players going online to find out more about the game, should start their quest with a search engine like Google or Yahoo!, just to make sure they land on the official Halo: Reach page which is located on Bungie.net.

Microsoft/Bungie don’t own all the Halo game title domains

The domain name HaloReach.com isn’t registered to Bungie, the developers of Halo. 

According to registrant records, the domain name is registered to VeriSign, Inc, and last month alone had nearly 20,000 unique visitors according to Compete despite not being developed.

While it’s possible the domain name is being managed somehow for Microsoft, chances are unlikely.  Though Microsoft owns names like Halo2.com and Halo3.com, the company doesn’t own Halo.com or another popular title in the series: HaloCombatEvolved.com. 

The URL haloreach.com currently resolves to a Melbourne IT page with the following language:

This Internet address is being managed by Melbourne IT DBS for one of the world’s top brands. At the present time there is no active Web Site for the address. It may be under construction, or the owner may have reserved the address for future needs.

Enterprises of all sizes rely on Melbourne IT DBS to provide the services and tools needed to manage and protect their online digital assets.