One enthusiast flew in from Malta to get his hands on the £209.99 console because it does not go on sale there until next month.

Mark Buttigieg, 28, arrived in London yesterday and was staying one night before heading home today. He said: “It’s just a great machine. I had to get it before January, I couldn’t wait until then,” Kiran Randhawa reported on The Evening Standard

The retail manager got his Xbox 360 free after being entered in a draw for being one of the first 100 customers in the queue. He added: “I’m a fanatic. I’m going back to my hotel now to play until I have to get my flight home.”

The Xbox 360 is the latest “must-have” games console that will top thousands of Christmas wish lists. So 800 shoppers got ahead of the game when they besieged a London store in the early hours of yesterday as it finally went on sale.

Some queued for up to nine hours outside Game’s store in Oxford Street as they waited for the doors to open at midnight.

So high is demand for the Microsoft machine that almost all the fans who braved the wet weather had pre-ordered their consoles.