In America, Halo 3 was met with great anticipation, and stores hosting midnight launch events soon found themselves without Halo 3 copies to sell. While Halo 3 did land Microsoft $170 million USD to very first day of launch, most of that money only came from America. In the UK, there were no such lines or hordes of excited gamers. For the first part, in fear of crowds rioting for Halo 3, the UK forbade stores to sell Halo 3 until 8AM local time. And when the stores could sell Halo 3, there wasn't much to see. While Microsoft was popping champagne bottles in celebration of the anticipated "movie-like" sales, the largest line waiting for Halo 3 in the UK topped out at around "a hand-full" of people.