THQ's CEO, Brian Farrell, told paidContent.org that while they have several games aimed at the casual and core markets of the gaming industry, they were also planning to further segment their offerings to cater to the fast growing massively multiplayer portion. Aside from taking further steps with Red Faction, Saints Row, and WWE Smackdown vs. Raw, THQ has plans for the multiplayer iterations of Warhammer 40000 and Company of Heroes.

This comes after Farrell witnessed the reception of their games line-up for 2008, recently demonstrated at the company's launch event in San Francisco last week.

The Company of Heroes online concept was pitched to Shanda of China sometime last year. However, instead of trying for a Western subscription-based model, THQ is striking a deal with Shanda to adopt the free-to-play model and earn revenue through microtransactions.

But bigger yet, Games Workshop's Warhammer 40K is also slated to be transformed into a massively multiplayer experience. Though franchise's name was undeniably called out, Farrell did not explain how the game would play out.

For now, it's just the plan, and the game was said to be "still a couple of years out" from realization. But dreams of kicking Chaos Space Marine behinds as Tau mercenaries has us hoping it'll be sooner than later. More updates on this as we come across them.