Video: the PS3 launch in London

For a moment it appeared that the first PlayStation 3 to be sold in Britain would not sell at all.

The cash register at the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street, London, initially refused to accept the card of Ritatsu Thomas, 17, who had queued for more than 36 hours for the long-awaited Sony console.

When it finally went through, however, the graphic design student held his prize aloft: “It feels excellent. I might have to play on it when I get home because I’m so excited I won’t be able to sleep.”

He was among more than 100 enthusiastic gamers who had queued in the store’s basement to receive the first devices when they went on sale at midnight.

Sony rewarded their patience by throwing in a free 46in HD television to take away – as well as a cab home, lest they be mugged before being able to play with their new toys.

Shanie Chatfield, 19, who bought the second device, refused to let being pipped by Mr Thomas dim her excitement: “I’m so proud – second is unbelievable. Number two has always been my lucky number.”

The student, from Guildford, Surrey who, along with other attendees had been entertained by DJs, dancers and graffiti artists, said that she planned to stay in touch with her fellow gamers: “It’s one of the best moments of our lives; and we’ve got to share this for the rest of our lives.”

For Sony, coming second will be less satisfactory.

It is launching the £425 machine in Europe four months later than originally planned, and in the back of executives’ minds will be that in the US, where it went on sale in November, PlayStation is being outsold by its rival, the Nintendo Wii, by more than two to one.

The company has shipped more than 200,000 of the devices to help guard against the supply shortages that affected both the Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox.

Retailers reported "brisk" trading this morning, but analysts said they were not expecting an immediate sell-out.

“I think it’s going to be a bit more of a slow burner than the Wii,” said Michael Brook, editor of the gadget magazine T3. “It doesn’t have the hype surrounding it, and it has been delayed so it’s difficult for them to keep the momentum.”

In Paris only about 50 people turned out to buy the 1,000 PS3s that went on sale at a ceremonial launch at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower.

At the Myers Department store in Sydney just 65 eager gamers queued for four hours to take the first devices away at midnight – barely outnumbering store staff and publicists.

One of them, Danny Zarka, an advertising sales executive, was convinced the wait had been worthwhile, however. “I was really thrilled to get my hands on this baby before anyone else,” Mr Zarka, 31, said. “It’s going to be a sleepless night – but I haven’t scheduled any meeting for early tomorrow.”

In Berlin, Sony staged a rock concert outside its European headquarters.

So far, there have been no reported shootings – as had been the case in Connecticut, where a man was held up for his wallet while waiting outside a Wal-Mart store at 3am.

Sony is hoping that the high-definition Blu-ray player, internet capabilities and superior processing power will convince gamers to part with the asking price.

“A lot of people have bought flat-panel TVs and they want content to go on it and PlayStation 3 is one of the few places they can get that kind of experience,” Ray Maguire, head of Sony Computer Entertainment in the UK, said.

The reaction among the gaming community has been mixed. John Houlihan, editor of Computer and Videogames.com, said that the device lacked a “must-buy” game.

Others have expressed concern about the device’s “backward compitability,” after Sony announced last month that certain games bought for PS1 and PS2 would not be playable on the new version – a problem the company says can now be fixed by downloading software from the internet.

Analysts predict that Sony will sell 4 million PlayStation 3s in Europe this year, including 1 to 1.5 million in the UK.