Free ‘Lost Odyssey’ Promotion Leaked For Xbox One Owners, Just A Test Or Coming Soon?

Xbox One owners wanting to try the backwards compatible Lost Odyssey may get it for free sometime in the near future. The classic Xbox 360 Japanese role-playing game was accidentally made available to download for free as part of what may be an upcoming Microsoft promotion to celebrate the one-year anniversary of backwards compatibility on the current-gen console.

The Lost Odyssey promotion was accidentally released to the Xbox Marketplace Thursday as discovered by Reddit user RadicalRico. The setup is a free Xbox T-shirt for their male or female Xbox Avatar which entitles the purchaser to a free download of the game. The shirts were pulled later in the evening as Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb explained this was only a test.

“This was a test that slipped out,” the Xbox LIVE programming director responded on Reddit. “There are no plans right now for it to go live.”

Here is the official description from both shirt listings.

“Thank you for a great year! Download this tee to get a free Xbox One digital entitlement to Lost Odyssey. The game will appear in your Ready to Install queue. Please note, the game entitlement is for Xbox One only and the tee is available to download for a limited time until November 30, 2016.”

If this promotion does eventually happen, it will be a fantastic reward for Xbox One owners and somewhat surprising. As previously covered, Lost Odyssey is not available to purchase as a digital download from the Xbox Store due to it spanning several DVDs. This sent those interested in the JRPG off to third-party sellers searching for a physical copy.

Lost Odyssey is still not available to purchase as a digital download outside of this free promotion. However, it appears it may make an appearance after the promotion ends November 30.

For the unfamiliar, Lost Odyssey takes place in a high fantasy setting where a “Magic-Industrial revolution” is taking place. The player follows an immortal named Kaim who has lost his memories along with a handful of other immortals. They must navigate this world and try to regain their memories while nations are developing magic weapons of mass destruction and others are falling apart from within.

The gameplay follows a traditional JRPG formula with a world map for players to explore full of towns and random encounters. The combat system uses a turn-based model with party members and enemies facing each other in two lines. Players have the option to choose between melee, ranged, and magic attacks that consist of Black, White, Spirit, and Composite spells.

Character progression is handled differently than most JRPGs. “Mortal” characters can learn skills from leveling up. Meanwhile, “Immortal” characters learn new skills by linking up with a “Mortal” while in battle and earning points that can be assigned to the skills. “Immortals” don’t necessarily die in battle, but can be knocked out when they lose all hit points. They will be revived later on, but players will have to restart from the last save point if the entire party goes down on the same turn.

As the Inquisitr previously reported, Xbox One manages backward compatibility by emulating the entire Xbox 360 operating system. This allows Xbox 360 games to run on the Xbox One without any special coding or other workarounds. The major hurdles remaining are the licensing agreements with development studios and publishers to allow the games to be played on the Xbox One and listed for sale on the Xbox Store for the console.

Following that, testing to make sure the game runs correctly on the Xbox One appears to be a time-consuming task. Microsoft has to test each game from beginning to end to ensure the emulator runs the title correctly. This can take hundreds of hours depending on the title.

Additionally, Microsoft uses an Xbox Uservoice group to gauge interest in which titles to add to the Xbox One backward compatibility library. Users can suggest and vote up which games they would like to see supported.

Credit to Reddit user RadicalRico for this find.

[Featured Image by Xbox]