Gaming News Round-Up: February 24th, 2005

Today's round-up include a comeback for a gritty cop, as well as some complex financial dealings for a wheeling and dealing Activision. - Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment will be reviving the Dirty Harry franchise in videogame form, with the cooperation of Clint Eastwood, the movie's original star. WBIE has not yet disclosed the studio developing the game, but the company is moving away from licensing, as done with companies such as EA (Batman Begins) or Atari/Shiny (The Matrix: Path of Neo), to develop or oversee products more closely itself. Eastwood's participation will include lending his voice and likeness to the project, as well as consulting on certain aspects of the design. The new Dirty Harry game, the first such title since the NES version from Gray Matter, will debut on next-generation consoles. - Activision has officially announced a 4-for-3 stock split, effective March 2005 and already approved by the board, as well as putting forward a special proposal to double the number of authorized shares. The separate proposal, which will come under stockholder vote on April 4th, would increase the amount of Activision stock in circulation from 225 million to 450 million. Analysts have been speculating that the stock split is being performed in order to free up Activision shares for possible developer and publisher acquisitions using stocks, although no acquisition targets have been specifically named.