What is required to produce Xbox1 games now ?

Right now? It requires a very close relationship with Microsoft, a heaping of NDAs, secure facilities, and many millions of dollars.

The thing won't even be available until "Q4 2013".

After it gets released to the public (possibly before it gets released) Microsoft will probably release updated tools for hobby developers.

I've talked to a number of people who are working with (or trying to work with) both MS and Sony on next gen stuff, on both indie and AAA. It's just anecdotal, but what I'm hearing is very different between the two. Sony is assisting indies to an extent I've never before heard of from any console company, whereas MS has become more reticent than usual.

Those of you who are expecting an updated XNA/XBLIG have an incredibly athletic form of optimism that I believe will result in major disappointment.

Those of you who are expecting an updated XNA/XBLIG have an incredibly athletic form of optimism that I believe will result in major disappointment.

While I have no inside information on this given the way they have taken the Win8, WP8 and WinRT development I feel this is the most likely 'in' for the hobbyist/bedroom coder; no framework but a WP like API (C++/Cx based for OS interaction) with D3D access and restrictions on the hardware usage (X% of GPU resources, Y CPU cores, Z RAM) to give a significant difference to the more professionally focused XBLA games.

As to when this will appear however I don't know; I doubt it'll be on launch, maybe mentioned around then and following 6 months later.

The 360 didn't really seem to be all that indie friendly in the first place. Plus if you look at a lot of indie games that were cross platform 360 sales are usually a fraction compared to when the game is released on steam, GOG, etc... To me it almost seems like Microsoft just doesn't want indies on their system.

XBLIG is for the little guys, hobby developers, and small companies.

But XBLIG required you to build on top of XNA, right? And XNA is dead, and I haven't heard anything about XNA games running on XBone, so.....? (To me that sounds like XBLIG is simply not coming to xbone)

Oh, ye of little imagination :)

IF Xbox One is to support indie development, why would you want it to be hamstrung by a framework that's inherently tied to the DX9 APIs?

What we know is that Microsoft has gone through not-insignificant work to have their machine running two separate OS partitions -- One, close to the metal and even more closely guarded, and another based on Windows 8. There are only two reasons to create this second partition based on Windows 8: Ability to tap into the Windows ecosystem of services more easily, and to provide a platform that more robust, familiar, and easy to access for non-specialized developers. Things like netflix and other media apps will certainly run on the Win8-based partition, but its also exactly the kind of playground you'd want indie game/app developers to play on, because its basically becomes just a particular configuration of a Windows 8 machine. With the security features built into the Windows Store application model, its feasible to allow apps and games written in native code to run on Xbox One.

This is, of course, speculation based on no particular inside knowlege, but it seems to me that this would be the preferable solution, and the likely outcome. Even though precious little came out of XBLIG, there's no way, in my opinion, that Microsoft will forego competing with Apple's AppStore, or Sony's PSVita SDK and vocal embracing of indie development on PS4.

Rather than taking a lack of information as an indication that indie games won't appear on Xbox One, why not simply take it for the incomplete story that it is?

I can agree that the XBox One announcement was something of a tactical misfire, but they never branded that even as being about games -- it was about the console itself. With E3 just around the corner, what sense would it have made to have two events dedicated to the games story?

My prediction is that there's a lot that will be revealed at E3, including an announcement about the indie story -- with formal details, and maybe an SDK, later revealed at the /build conference.