X360: First Halo 3 owners in the world - Release date broken in Norwegian store chain
Source: NRK Spiller (translated by me).
Halo 3, the most hyped game of the year, should not be on the market before 26 September. But a Norwegian store was the first in the world to sell it.
Marked and communications chief of Expert, Trond Bentestuen, tells Spiller.no that five copies of the game have been sold from an Expert store in Stavanger.
- We're in dialog with the customers that have bought the game, Bentestuen says. This is to make sure that the customers that bought the game keep it to themselves. We're sure these are serious gamers that won't do anything silly. Bentestuen says that Expert does not have the right to crave the games back.
Expert does not want to tell who the lucky owners are. - The five Halo 3-copies were sold by mistake. We have now gone through the routines to make sure this won't happen again in other Expert stores.
Bentestuen says that when games arrive so long before the release date, they have the responsibility of keeping them from being sold. But this time the routines failed. Microsoft does not wish to comment the case to Spiller.no.
On the Norwegian IT site, ITavisen's forums, one of the lucky owners commented this on Saturday (translated, so all rights reserved):
I couldn't believe my own eyes. Ahead of me in the games section of Expert was Halo 3. I equipped my VISA card, and went straight home to try it. From what I can see, Expert has now stopped selling the game after what was a mistake from their side. I run through it with a friend yesterday, but I won't spoil the ending. :)
Image of one of the world's first Halo 3 owners:
http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/946/norhalrl6.jpg
In addition to that, another person by the nick of MOCAMBO who has got their hands on Halo 3, has posted more pictures (including spoilers, so beware!) on the Halo Fans Forums here.
