“Halo 3 Line Starts here,” read a hand-written sign placed on the ground. Daniel Krug, 18, garnered a lot of attention as the first person to line up at EB Games on Powell Street near San Francisco’s Union Square.
No one, however, attempted to pay the San Francisco resident for his place in line where he stood since 5 p.m. “This is Halo, this isn’t the iPhone, man,” Krug said.
Hundreds of Microsoft Xbox 360 owners waited for the midnight Sept. 25 release of Halo 3, the final chapter of Bungie Studios immensely popular futuristic battle saga launching exclusively on the Xbox 360 gaming system. The line of gamers would eventually stretch to the end of block, round the corner onto O’Farrell Street, and spill onto Stockton Street.
The highly anticipated video game set a national record for sales in the first 24 hours. Halo 3 raked in $170 million on Tuesday, as reported in the New York Times. The figure marked an entertainment milestone by smashing the previous first-day sales record set by Halo 2 at $125 million, and surpassing the initial release earnings of any video game, movie, or novel to date.
The San Francisco store was one of about 10,000 retail locations nationwide that opened its doors at midnight to long lines of anxious customers, according to gaming website www.gamesindustry.biz. Many fans paid for their copy of the game months in advance to ensure they would have one as soon as it was released.
Not far from the front was Nicholas Ray, 18, who studies animation and video game design at the Academy of Art in San Francisco.
“I’m not going to sleep tonight.” Ray said. “I’ve got class tomorrow, but I’m going to stay up all night playing Halo.”
EB Games employee Robert Branch helped control the crowds of people waiting outside.
“We have a process that we are having everyone go through this year.” He said. “What we are doing is having everyone go into the store before they get into the line. There they will pay for the game, if they haven’t already. Then we will give them a ticket they will use to pick up their copy of the game.”
To keep waiting fans charged up, promoters for Mountain Dew were on scene sampling their new Game Fuel energy drink. Buzzed on caffeine, anxious customers played Halo 2 on the street team’s truck mounted video system.
The bell from a passing cable car roused cheers from the crowd. Shouts of “Halo 3!” echoed through the line. The doors opened at one minute before midnight, and waiting fans filed in to claim their games. Upon exiting, the first shoppers raised their packages triumphantly before running home to play.
