In our exclusive interview with David Pollard from Eiconic games we asked him about the controversial start that Microsoft had with its indie publishing stance. At GamesCom, Microsoft announced the ID@Xbox program which allows indies to publish their games with ease compared to before. However David Pollard believes that even though this changes are welcomed, Microsoft seem to lack the passion for indie games.
“I think it’s the open attitude of the guys at Sony that really helped make that decision – they are just so much more approachable. Over the last year or so we’ve been able to build a great relationship with Sony, whereas Microsoft’s XBLA policy of requiring a publisher with release slots burned us in the past and in Microsoft I just can’t see the passion for indies you get from guys like Sony’s Shahid Ahmed (and even Shuhei Yoshida!). There are welcome signs this is changing at MS, but at the moment it feels like that might just be a reaction to their recent PR disasters and not a genuine change of stance. Hopefully I’ll be proved wrong though,” he told us.
Given the launch line up that Sony has for the PS4, we also asked him about the notion that indie games can be system sellers as well.
“I definitely think indie games can make a big contribution to how attractive a console is. Personally, I prefer to play games on console rather than PC (mainly due to working in front of a PC all day and needing to get away from it when I’m relaxing!), and there’s a lot of great indie games on PC that I’m really excited to see coming to consoles, and now brand new indie games coming straight to PS4, which is amazing! And I think there is room for both indie games and AAA games on next gen consoles – they are very different beasts after all,” he added.
Eiconic games are currently working on Final Horizon, for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita.