Just to clear up a few tech myths that I saw float by on here:
1. There's nothing about XBLA that forces you to use .NET or C# or XNA. Braid didn't use it. If you think that all those huge, multi-platform AAA games (like BioShock or FC2) are using it... you gotta be kidding me! So, XBLA is as "framework agnostic" as Windows. (Though you may need a few XNA hooks for achievements and such---but that's the same with any structured platform).
2. There is a platform-independent middleware solution for "3D renderers". It's called OpenGL, and it works great, and loads of "big" games are made with it. There are also cross-platform middlewares for sound and user input... like SDL (which probably does not work on XB360, but IO and low-level sound are a pretty small part of any code base). So, you don't have to spend any time "developing a platform-independent" framework yourself. Derek can tell us about Aquaria's cross-platform dev... I'm guessing it was OpenGL as well.
3. I believe that the reason Fez uses C#/XNA is mainly because that was the language/framework that Renaud knew best---I think he was learning it in school or something like that. Phil found a genius programmer who could help him realize his vision (and share that vision with him), so he really didn't have a choice.
OpenGL does not run on xbox 360
Xbox Live Arcade games uses all DirectX (or an engine that has a d3d renderer at least), even XNA is a sort of more high level wrapper over DirectX APIs.
About XBLA games i agree, the 99% are not done with XNA, also because it is very slow on xbox 360, the compact .net framework version that runs on the console isn't all that fast. It's comparable to a 3-4 years old laptop with a powerful graphics card (the bottleneck is the cpu when using xna on xbox).
One of the reasons indie developers chooses XNA even for an xbox live game is because it doesn't need a devkit, you can run your code on a normal xbox unit, even if you need to be connected to Live...
A devkit not only costs money but you need to take it directly from microsoft, and sadly it's something that will not happen if you don't have a legit software house with an office :\ that's not the case with Polytron so i was asking if they took a devkit at some point.
Doing the game on a DirectX engine and making it run on directly on the hardware of the console should make it a lot faster, but maybe it's already light enough to run well on XNA at a steady framerate
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