XboxONE.ms leads to xbox.com and has Microsoft's details in the WhoIs - it was registered for just 1 year about 15 mins before the announcement. But .com and .net are both owned by someone who got them in 2011 and currently they sit as Go Daddy splash pages. .co.uk was bought on 21st May this year by an obvious opportunist. XboxONE.org is a fan/news thing named in the style of bungie.org.

I know buying up a load of domains would have made it a bit obvious what the name was, but seriously if you don't have a crack team ready to register them all in the 15 mins before the announcement then you can't really care too much. I'm sure they will try and use their lawyers to just get them forcibly transferred to Microsoft, so maybe they figured it didn't matter.

It was already hard to search for things about Original Xbox stuff without having 360 things dilute the results. Now it'll be next to impossible unless you filter the search range to pre 2006 or something. I don't suppose anyone can remember which western themed game on original xbox had a glitch/feature where you could ride your horse from the start of the game right to the final cut scene/credits by going over a couple of hills or something? Was it a Call of Juarez, GUN or Read Dead thing, or something else?

I don't see it really mattering. Xbox.com is the site where they do everything; odds are, they will just keep using that. Having the other sites direct to that might be useful, but it doesn't seem to really matter to me.

It's a tough situation for them. If they register the domains in advance, they leak the name. If they don't they risk someone else getting them. It seems they opted for the latter, and are now trying to gain control over the domains through arbitration.

Cybersquatting is generally illegal. The people that bought the domains can't make any money off of Microsoft's name, or attempt to sell it to them. If they try they'll just have the DN revoked and given to MS.

They'd just use xbox.com anyway. Lots of brands are like that. Sony doesn't own killzone2.com or killzone3.com; they just use killzone.com.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2419505,00.asp

If you own a domain before the product, technically that is not "cybersquatting".