After the Wii U reveal, I contacted numerous indies to find out who was working on what, and received a large number of responses back. When the PS4 was revealed I did the same again, and received the same level of correspondence.
After the Xbox One reveal, I went ahead and did it all over again -- but the reaction has been rather different this time around. In the same space of time that I waited for responses to my Wii U and PS4 pieces, I've received just a handful of replies, most of which said they weren't working on Xbox One games.
It could be that I've simply contacted the wrong indies. My train of thought was that Microsoft is most likely going to be working with indie devs that it has worked with before, but as of yet I've come up with past Xbox 360 devs telling me they aren't working on Xbox One games.
Joel Kinnunen from Frozenbyte (Trine) told me, "We keep an open channel to Microsoft and there are some thoughts going on, however right now we have nothing to announce for Xbox One."
He later clarified, "Generally, from a console online distribution channel, we're looking for the ability to self-publish without publishers, and to a lesser degree things like free updating and reasonable certification process."
Even more worrying is that a number of indie devs have said that they've tried to get in on the Xbox One action, but as of yet haven't received any additional information past a simple introduction.
Rami Ismail at Dutch studio Vlambeer, for example, said that Microsoft actually got in touch with him about development for the platform, and then never got back to him when he made contact. The Super Crate Box developer hadn't heard of any other European devs who were looking into creating Xbox One games either, and he's a fairly well connected guy.
And Young Horses' Phil Tibitoski (Octodad) had a similar experience, in which someone at Microsoft responded to a request for Xbox One development information, and then was never heard from again. It would appear that getting in contact with Microsoft to actually build games for their new console isn't exactly easy. [UPDATE: moments after this article went live, Microsoft did in fact get in touch with Tibitoski.]
Meanwhile, Gaijin Games' Alex Neuse (The BIT.TRIP series), another indie "in the know", said that him and his studio "haven't seen the kind of effort to reach out to smaller developers the way that Sony and Nintendo have - but of course, that doesn't mean that they don't have a plan for developers like ourselves." Gaijin hasn't talked to Microsoft about Xbox One development.
That's not to say that there aren't any indie developers working on Xbox One games right now. Nathan Vella of Capybara Games (Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP) featured in a video during the console's reveal, and elsewhere I've heard murmurings that Minecraft's Mojang are currently in talks with Microsoft (although Markus Persson was unable to confirm with me whether this was the case.)
