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.

Final Horizon is an extraterrestrial real time strategy game under development at Eiconic Games. The game is being developed for the PlayStation Vita and Sony’s next generation console, the PlayStation 4. We recently had an opportunity to have a chat with David Pollard who is the director and programmer at the company to ask him about their experience working with the PlayStation 4 and what they liked about it.

Much is being made out of the 8GB GDDR5 RAM memory on the PlayStation 4. As technology advances, we asked whether this little choice by Sony will make sure that the PS4 will not become obsolete in the next few years, to which he replied:

“There’s a few interesting things about the PS4 that should keep it from becoming obsolete too soon, as well as the choice of memory. For example, the way the GPU is set up to encourage it’s use not only in the traditional way of drawing stuff on the screen, but also as a resource to do complex calculations, means that much like the PS3 before it, it will be a while before engine coders will work out how to really push its capabilities.”

We also asked him whether they are going to use the much praised touch pad functionality of the DualShock 4 and he confirmed to us that this is something that they are currently looking into.

“We still need to prototype a few ideas, one of which is to see what it’s like using the touchpad to control a mouse-like pointer for selecting towers, etc. It’s quite nice on the Vita being able to use the touch screen to tap select things. One of the things we’re doing is giving the player a few different ways to control the game to suit different play styles,” he added.

Final Horizon was one of the many indie games announced at this year’s GamesCom. Stay tuned for more news and updates for all things Final Horizon.