It’s no secret that Funcom’s latest MMORPG, The Secret World, has been struggling since the games official launch. Funcom had to lay off a large number of employees, the first major patch was delayed, and the free to play weekend was considered a flop by a lot of participants.

A recent article on GamesIndustry.biz featured an interview with the new Funcom CEO, Ole Schreiner. During the article he discusses the current state of the game, as well as the potential for a transfer to the free to play model.

That said we definitely have the tools to turn The Secret World into a free-to-play game – or even hybrid – should we decide to do that somewhere down the line. We did that with Age of Conan with significant success. We all know that trends and expectations in the gaming business, and perhaps particularly the MMO genre, is evolving quickly, and we’re regularly re-evaluating our business model against the changing currents of the marketplace and our own player base as well. Not only in terms of The Secret World, but also our future games.

With the huge hype surrounding the Guild Wars 2 release, The Secret World really need a great launch to have any opportunity of keeping with the free to play model. Guild Wars 2 continues to explode as many of the big name websites are scoring it as one of the best MMO titles of all time, is there any room left for The Secret World? Even as a free to play title?