Fans flock to GAMEs Black Ops launch

As well as the celebrity-driven official Call of Duty: Black Ops launch party at Battersea Power Station last night, UK retailer GAME held the official retail launch gathering at its Oxford Street store in central London.

Around 300 Call of Duty fans were at hand to be the first to officially buy the game, with the punters at the front of the queue having been there since Sunday afternoon. The crowd were able to play the game in full 3D and meet Treyarch’s design director David Vonderhaar.

In fact, having headed off to the Battersea gathering Vonderhaar made a surprise reappearance later in the night to sell the very first copies and sign copies of the game.

People have been queuing up for so long – it’s amazing,” Vonderhaar told MCV. I’m having such a great time. knew there would be a lot of people, but I had no idea it would be as big as this. It’s overwhelming on every level.”

With the doors not closing until 2:00am, GAME staff faced a rush to get to bed in time for what will be another long day today.

We had over 300 people at our Oxford Street store, including three guys who camped out for over 30 hours,” GAME’s head of PR Neil Ashurst told MCV. Customers were buzzing, the game looks amazing and there could be a lot of people calling in sick tomorrow after staying up all night.

However, for hundreds of GAME and Gamestation staff this morning is just the halfway point in what will be a very long and tiring couple of days.

Ashurst added: There’ll be no rest for us though, as we’re now getting ready to do it all again tomorrow night for the launch of Kinect for Xbox 360.”