I am sure it will be! I had a quick chat with Brent Oxley, owner of Hostgator. They have big plans for domain registrations and they are very optimistic. I think they will make a huge success of it, besides the fact that it will compliment their current business model.
I think their hosting is great, but I've just heard bad things about them shaving in their affiliate program. I still get most from GoDaddy, but it's only because I have so many domains with them. I hate using more than one registrar because it's a pain to manage multiple domains. Having said that I get a lot of mine from internet.bs (I know it's not a good name for a company), but I just use their free reseller API with a few PHP scripts and I can register domain names, setup default DNS settings right from the command-line and I love it
I doubt HG can lower their domain price as the domain price is controlled price. HG will not offer offer such as $0.99/domain.
Great business decision...if there's anyone who can take on GoDaddy, Hostgator would be it. Interesting to see how this pans out. I'm not transferring 460 domains out of GoDaddy, though