This morning, an eShop release schedule from Nintendo of Europe indicated that Squids Odyssey, an indie RPG by The Game Bakers, will effectively be the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U’s very first “cross-buy” title, meaning that you’ll only need to buy the game once and you’ll be able to play it on both platforms when it releases this Thursday.

There is a catch, however. Siliconera got in touch with The Game Bakers and learnt that the promotion only works one way—you buy the game on 3DS and get the Wii U version for free. You will not be able to buy the Wii U version and get a free 3DS copy.

The Game Bakers revealed to us that it was actually Nintendo of Europe that approached the studio and asked if they would be interested in the promotion.

“Indeed this is something new for Nintendo, they call it conditional sales,” a representative from Game Bakers shared with Siliconera. “They asked us if we’d be interested in this kind of operation and we said yes. I believe Squids Odyssey is one of the first titles or the first title to support this.”

“Unfortunately,” the representative continued, “it’s only 3DS -> WiiU for the moment, even though I know they would like to see this work the other way round (and we’d like it too!).”

I asked if there were similar plans for Squids Odyssey to be a cross-buy game in North America as well, but was informed that Nintendo of America “could not support this operation yet”. I then asked if this meant that The Game Bakers had approached NOA about the promotion.

They replied: “Yes we did ask, we really like this promotion and wished to make it happen for all gamers, but NOA could not support this kind of promotion.”