Thousands Respond to Call of Duty

Long queues are not always seen in the most positive of lights, but some are certainly more welcome than others.

This week, thousands of gaming fans across the UK joined the queue for the midnight release of CoD: Black Ops 2, a game expected to bring in sales of more than £1billion. Scenes were similar to those witnessed back in September when the iPhone 5 hit stores, creating the UK’s largest ever retail queue outside of Apple’s Regent Street store in London.

Inevitably, this is great news for those gaming and technology retailers involved, but positives should be taken by the retail sector as a whole.

At a time when we are constantly hearing of declining sales and less surplus cash to spend on perceived luxuries, launches like this show that the consumer is still willing to dig deep for the most desirable of products.

Obviously we like to keep a close eye on how the queues are managed at such events, and it is encouraging to see that the launch of CoD: Black Ops 2 passed without incident. It just goes to show that carefully managed and well planned queues can help to create a hugely successful event, and mean that your brand is hitting the headlines for all of the right reasons.