The hit show already holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for most watched factual programme in the world – 200 territories – and has local versions in the US and South Korea but, as Top Gear commercial director Duncan Gray said, China is a "huge market and opportunity".
There'd been growing friction between the Metal Gear Solid director and the Tokyo-headquartered gaming giant, and the drama that preceded his announcement of a new, independent Kojima Productions was very visibly played out in public.
Something like this had been anticipated: The corporation's recent handling of its relationship with Metal Gear Solid director Hideo Kojima has been nothing short of outright hostile, and the subsequent cancellation of Silent Hills Kojima and Guillermo del Toro's Silent Hill series reboot got even the most optimistic gamer to thinking: They really are pulling the plug, aren't they?
"Kayak fishermen are gear freaks," Ric Hawthorne, director of marketing, promotions and advertising for Cobra Kayaks, a manufacturer based in California, said in a telephone interview.
Accompanied by pounding musical cues and the young British climber Leo Houlding, Mr. Anker suits up in period gear, while the director, Anthony Geffen, provides disappointing images of the Himalayas that — notwithstanding Liam Neeson's awed narration — fail to make our spines tingle.
The guy charged with keeping the movie in gear is the director Michael Bay, the hard-core action savant whose other big-screen eruptions include "The Rock," "Armageddon," "Pearl Harbor" and "Bad Boys II".
At the time of the Gear launch Ian Fogg, director for mobile and telecoms at research company IHS commented that the Gear was "a prototype masquerading as a commercial product and because of that, it is unlikely to be successful in the market".
More than a million people signed an online petition to see Clarkson return to Top Gear, but BBC Director General Tony Hall came to the decision that "a line has been crossed" and "there cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another".
Metal Gear Solid series director Hideo Kojima has been a part of Konami's essential creative DNA since the mid-1980s, but 2015 has seen the relationship between man and company break down, seemingly irreparably.
Between the awards, there was time for a tribute to late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, and awards host Geoff Keighley revealed that while Metal Gear Solid V director Hideo Kojima was invited to the event, a lawyer representing the game's publishers Konami prevented him from doing so.
