2006 was a good year for just about everyone in the games industry, and THQ is expecting to be one of the year's success stories.

The publisher has announced they'll be increasing its net sales and earnings forecasts for the fiscal third quarter ending on December 31, 2006, and the fiscal year ending March 31, 2007. For the latter prediction, THQ claims they'll top $1 billion in sales, and for the third quarter, they're hoping for a net sales figure of about $475 million. They also upped their expectations for earnings per diluted share to $0.97, up from the $0.69 - $0.74 range THQ had previously estimated.

As for the fourth quarter, they're predicting to hit net sales of approximately $146 million, which is almost exactly the number analysts predicted a few months ago. The $1 billion expectation now set for fiscal year's end is up from the initially reported $925-$975 million.

"THQ's platform strategy served us very well this holiday with stronger than expected sales of mass-market franchises WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007, Disney/Pixar Cars and Avatar: The Last Airbender across key current and next-generation hardware systems," said Brian Farrell, president and CEO of THQ. "This performance combined with our successful original property launches exclusively for next-generation systems have positioned THQ to achieve the significant milestone of $1 billion in sales for fiscal 2007."

THQ should be releasing their third-quarter results on Friday, February 2, and at the same time, they'll talk about their 2008 business outlook.