The James Bond franchise has always had masses of potential, something that was never really grabbed by the dog’s until 1997 when a certain Rare almost single-handedly revolutionised the first-person shooter genre on home consoles with GoldenEye - as well as showing some of the PC boys how it should be done too. Not one of the subsequent titles has repeated the British developer’s success, although Activision hopes to change all that.

Activision bought the rights to James Bond from Electronic Arts back in 2006, but has made little use of its $70 million USD purchase since. However, the firm chose this week’s Leipzig Game Conference to announce that a new, next-generation Bond game is in the works, reports GamePlayer.

Unfortunately there is next to no details that we can tell you about said game, other than that it is likely to be based on the newest Bond flick that is scheduled to sneak onto cinema screens in December 2008.

The one trickle of information that was leaked alongside the announcement was developer duties. Treyarch, Beenox and Vicarious Visions will be looking after the game and given past histories, we would expect Treyarch to take care of the Microsoft Xbox 360 version.

Somehow we doubt that Activision (or anyone else for that matter) will top the Nintendo 64’s GoldenEye (not in graphical or gameplay terms of course, just the sheer shake-up of the genre that was caused), but we’re hoping that it’ll make good use of a treasured franchise that has certainly seen some ups and downs over the last decade.