The Secret World console game is on the back burner

Four years ago, it was still reasonable to believe that we were on the verge of some kind of console MMO explosion. That's when Funcom unveiled The Secret World, an MMO in development for PC and Xbox 360 -- the first and last time there's been a definitive statement about the console version of the game to date. (A press release in January described The Secret World as "a next-generation massively multiplayer online game for the PC platform.")

What a surprise, then, to hear creative director Ragnar Tørnquist tell Eurogamer that he's "been very vocal in saying that when -- I guess also if -- we have a console version of The Secret World, it's not going to be exactly the same game." This is the first we've heard of a change in plans, even if we'd presumed that, at best, The Secret World console game had been secretly delayed.

While Tørnquist allowed that he had "a team" working "specifically" on an Xbox 360 version (at least at some point), he noted, "It's not something we're focusing on now. I think it will only happen if The Secret World turns out to be -- as of course it hopefully is -- a huge success. We will want to do things on other platforms; we will want to expand the universe. But it won't be the same game."

"You can still have the same setting; you can still have the same philosophies, the same basic systems," he said of a console version. "But you really need to make a different game. How different that will be, it's hard to say."

As for the PC version, Tørnquist told Eurogamer, "We're at the point where we know when the game is going to be released, but we're not quite ready to tell people yet." It's a secret.