Incinerator Games firing up Wii Cars

When NPD released its preliminary June figures last week, one of the big success stories was THQ's Cars. The adaptation of the wildly popular Pixar computer-animated family film made up nearly a third of the top-10 best-selling games of the month. The PlayStation 2 version came in fourth, the Game Boy Advance version sixth, and the GameCube version 10th. (The game was also released for the Xbox, PlayStation Portable, PC, and Nintendo DS.)

In May, THQ announced that Cars would also be coming to two next-gen platforms--the Xbox 360 and Wii--this fall. The 360 version will be developed by the makers of the current-generation Cars, Rainbow Studios (MTX vs. ATV Unleashed). The Wii version, though, will be made by an all-new internal studio at THQ. Titled Incinerator Games, the new unit will be based in Carlsbad, California and will be focused on next-generation console development.

Though THQ did not disclose the size of Incinerator, it did say its staff is made up of "veterans of the Twisted Metal, NFL GameDay, and MLB 2006: The Show projects from Sony's 989 studios, as well as the Midnight Club franchise from Rockstar." Besides Cars, Incinerator is also working on unnamed "future projects for next-generation systems."