Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has revealed that one of the co-owners of the James Bond movie series wasn't all that keen on the 2010 GoldenEye reboot having guns in it.
Speaking on the Grit podcast (thanks, Gamespot), Kotick touched upon the divisive Eurocom-made Wii reboot, which retconned Daniel Craig—then the incumbent movie Bond—into the GoldenEye universe, replacing Pierce Brosnan, who starred in the 1995 movie and the best-selling N64 video game, which was developed by Rare.
"GoldenEye is what actually sold the N64," says Kotick. "We made a sequel, and it was a challenging thing to make because Barbara Broccoli did not really want anything that was violence. And she didn't really want guns in the game."
In case you weren't aware, Broccoli and half-brother Michael G. Wilson are the current custodians of the James Bond movie franchise, which is based on the spy character created by Ian Fleming.
This request chimes with another Bond-related story, where Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto asked Rare if Bond could visit his enemies in hospital at the end of GoldenEye 007.
Kotick adds that he understands where Broccoli was coming from, given that video games are played by a lot of children, but explains that the stance simply wasn't possible in an FPS game like GoldenEye.
However, as noted by @Graslu00, a key figure in the GoldenEye community, this lends further credence to the notion that it was the movie rights holders who prevented the release of the much-hyped Xbox 360 remake of the game.
The Wii reboot of GoldenEye also came to the Nintendo DS, and was later released on PS3 and Xbox 360 as GoldenEye: Reloaded.