Braben is a great guy and really cannot be blamed for the fiasco surrounding the last game to have the "Elite" name.
Mr. Braben and his company used to buy a lot of computer equipment from us when I worked for a retail company (Evesham Micros).
I have personally sold him computers and then when I changed jobs from selling PC's to my first Technical Support role I have dealt with his issues and also visited onsite to fix machines.
I won't for a second say we are "best friends" and I haven't spoken to the guy in years.
At the time nobody else knew who he was - me, being one of the biggest fans of all the Elite games did.
On the occasions I went onsite he did tell me a few of the stories of the later Elite games.
He was under amazing pressure to get things released with release dates not being pushed back as they tend to be these days, but pulled forward.
There is very little you can tell a publisher when contracts are in place and they in effect own every line of code you write.
As I said above I haven't spoken to him in years and Elite IV was never anything he mentioned to me so I don't know anything specific.
However I've known about Elite IV as a project for a while (It's been a far distance pre-order on Play for at least a year) and hopefully it will be modern day graphics but a step back to the original - because if it is I'll buy it, love it and probably never play anything else ever again
