Oblivion GOTY Edition unveiled

Bethesda Softworks has announced The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition, which is due for release on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC this September.

It incorporates the original game, the downloadable Knights of the Nine expansion, and the full-blown Shivering Isles retail/download expansion.

A Bethesda community manager, responding to queries on the official forum, said we'd have to "stay tuned" for news on whether the Game of the Year Edition also included all the other downloadable content released to date through Xbox Live Marketplace and OblivionDownloads.com.

Anyway, the Game of the Year Edition is so named because, despite being a poor man's Slitherlink/Viva Pinata/etc., Elder Scrolls: Oblivion finished 2006 with more gongs than a Rank Organisation film convention. We even gave it 10/10.

But while it's bound to be welcomed by people who've yet to buy it, and by Bethesda's bank manager, it's likely to provoke consternation among PS3 owners who bought Oblivion, weren't then served the Shivering Isles expansion, and are now seemingly being asked to fork over a fresh stack of notes to do so - all within six months of the PS3 Oblivion's already frustratingly delayed release.

Bethesda could yet release Shivering Isles and other downloads through the PlayStation Network to save people the expense, of course, but there's no word about it in the press release. As one Oblivion forumite complained: "If I knew that this GOTY Edition was coming out when I bought [the game] three months ago, I would have held off!"

We'll let you know how it's all resolved.