Oblivion slips from PS3 launch, expansion for PC, 360 late Nov

by James Ransom-Wiley { Nov 9th 2006 at 7:20PM }

It's a phenomenon known as déjà vu. It's a phenomenon known as -- oh, forget it ... Bethesda has dropped The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion from PlayStation 3's launch lineup, conjuring up memories of last year's delay, when the title was scratched from Xbox 360's holiday roster. The PS3 version has been pushed to the first quarter of 2007.

Bethesda clarified that the Knights of the Nine expansion (built into the PS3 version) will be released for PC on November 21 and includes all previously released downloadable content. Knights of the Nine content will also be offered to Xbox 360 players, via Xbox Live Marketplace, on the same date. A standalone download (just including Knights of the Nine content) will be released for PC on December 4 for $9.99.

Tags: Bethesda, Elder Scrolls IV, ElderScrollsIv, expansion, Knights of the Nine, KnightsOfTheNine, launch06, Oblivion, PS3

Related From Joystiq

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

that one dude @ Nov 9th 2006 7:25PM

This should turn out to be a nice fanboy fight.

that one dude @ Nov 9th 2006 7:29PM

P.S. First post.

Mario @ Nov 9th 2006 7:32PM

All goes according to plan, muahahaha.

Nate @ Nov 9th 2006 7:31PM

Shame for PS3 (only) buyers....that was gonna be one of the best launch games. I have it for 360, and it's an amazing experience.

Oh well, at least it's still gonna be on PS3. Hopefully, most PS3 owners still give it a go come 2007....it's truly one of the best games of this generation.

RK @ Nov 9th 2006 7:31PM

typo:
know = known

1up_clock @ Nov 9th 2006 7:39PM

OH SNAP.

Hinkmania @ Nov 9th 2006 7:37PM

Sony has been getting some tough breaks since... well, since the PS3 got out of the development phase and into the production phase.

ill trooper @ Nov 9th 2006 7:38PM

Well, it's more like the 360 version in almost every way now!

cheese @ Nov 9th 2006 7:42PM

Since the PS3 version comes with all the extra content that everyone on 360 has had to pay for up to now, I might just trade my 360 version in and get this one, once I get a PS3. If anything, PS3 owners will get an overall better version on a platform that is HDD standard.

azesino @ Nov 9th 2006 8:12PM

#9 you dont have a 360, or Oblivion, why do I say this, no one in the world after finishing playing Oblivion will grab it and re-play it again after almost a year, your just a Sony Fanboy.

For us who played Oblivion Months and Months ago,the game have become a wonderfull memory, but not to the point to shell another $60 and buy another copy just because it was ported to the PS3 (and I Pre-Order mines already)

deaftly @ Nov 9th 2006 7:56PM

@9 , the addon is only 10 bucks, so you're going to spend 660ish dollars + taxes to play the same game that you already own? this sonybot clearly doesnt even own the game or a 360

Steve2 @ Nov 9th 2006 8:10PM

Get used to it. Almost all the good PS3 games are due out in March (EU release), not in November. It's been that way since about two months ago.

This isn't the first one to slip, and it wouldn't surprise me if it is the last.

Folks, it's how consoles are launched. It's been that way since PS2.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Kiwir @ Nov 9th 2006 8:09PM

This just proves how hell-ish it must've been to develop for ps3. Good luck squeezing all those textures and details in mere 256 mb memory.

Steve2 @ Nov 9th 2006 8:15PM

Kiwir:
A mere 256MB memory?

I played Oblivion through on my PC.

I played it in 1280x768 resolution.

My PC has a 256MB video card (7800GT). The game looked great.

Bethesda shouldn't have to do any work to make Oblivion work in 256MB texture RAM on PS3.

Now, in 256MB main RAM (PS3 has 256MB+256MB RAM), that's a lot different...

Of course, Xbox 360 people would act like you can use >256MB for textures, somehow ignoring that that means you get even less than 256MB RAM for the remaining (main RAM) parts.

When was the last PC game released that ran well with less than 256MB main RAM?

There is plenty of work to do to port a modern game to either platform.

cheese @ Nov 9th 2006 8:16PM

@#10 Was I slamming the 360 version? No, I was just noting that the PS3 version comes with: Horse Armor, Mehrune's Razor quest, the Orrey quest, Spell Tomes, Thieve's Den, Vile Lair and Wizards Tower, which total 1130 MS points, and that's not even with the new Knights expansion. I was just saying that it'd be worth getting since it's all integrated into the game. Why do you have to be such a jerk? I sold my PS2 over a year ago to get a 360 and frankly I like the games on 360 (Gears of War, hell yeah) and I'm looking forward to getting a PS3 as well. People like you are turning this whole console war BS into an annoying juvenile debacle. Btw I've played Oblivion for over 40 hours and havn't touched the main quest yet and it's an awesome game. Why wouldn't I want the most recent version of it? When Burnout Revenge came out on Xbox I got it, played it, but when I got the 360 I got rid of the xbox version and promptly got the best version, on Xbox 360.

rick @ Nov 9th 2006 8:34PM

I thought the ps3 version only came with the original game and knights of the 9? none of the dl content that was on live.

porkepik @ Nov 9th 2006 8:39PM

256 meg of ram for textures I either do not see a problem with that I also ran Oblivion on my PC with an ATI 9800 pro with only 128meg of ram in 1024*768 and game was pretty good looking and fluid (pc is only an athlon XP 2.6 with 1gig of ram from 3 years ago). I do not know why everyone is bashing sony for the 256 meg of ram for textures it feels plenty from my point of view except maybe for 1080p games , for 720p as oblivion it is really enough. And when you say PS3 has only 256meg of vram , do you think the X360 has a lot more when the main program, level maps,+audio+libraries are in the 512 meg of the 360, Should not be a lot more than 300 meg, cause when I look at my oblivion if you take the exe file+some audio,.... it take at least 200meg in my ram, I do not see why the X360 version would be so different in memory usage

Kiwir @ Nov 9th 2006 8:38PM

Steve2:
I've heard that on the ps3 dev kit, the os alone takes up to 71 mb out of the 256 general purpose ram (as comparison, I've heard 360 eats only 16 mb for the os). True, there is the 256 vram, so I take back what I said about the texture. But to squeeze in the sheer amount of 'stuff' that goes on in the game - it makes programming games in ps3 to be a real challange. See the posting from the Epic guy regarding this.

cheese @ Nov 9th 2006 11:21PM

@#16, per Joystiq's story: "Bethesda clarified that the Knights of the Nine expansion (built into the PS3 version) will be released for PC on November 21 and includes all previously released downloadable content". I would think that the PS3 one would come w/ all the loot, but I could be wrong. Would be nice.

Peacefuloutrage @ Nov 13th 2006 11:51PM

To all of the people posting "My PC only has 128MB RAM", how much MAIN memmory did you have? I seriously doubt that 128MB was all you had. And yes, if they wrote the game in assmebly language, it would take less memory but would be in devolopment hella long.

Kiwir @ Nov 9th 2006 9:32PM

Oh and don't get me wrong: 256 MB of VRAM is plenty. Too much actually for a game to use such dedicated memory amount. That's the beauty of shared memory in 360, imho.
So it can in runtime deals massive damage to the giant crab (hyuk hyuk hyuk.. ok, sorry that gets old)

Tel @ Nov 9th 2006 9:58PM

I note the irony that the new Oblivion content, once thought to be PS3 exclusive, will arrive on the 360/PC long before the PS3 version even comes out.

@ 15
Wrong.
The PS3 will get Knights of the Nine, but WILL NOT have Horse Armour, Mehrune's Razor quest, the Oratory quest, Spell Tomes, Thieves Den, Vile Lair or Wizards Tower.

I QUOTE:
IGN: Are all of the add-ons going to ship with it or will they still be extra?

Howard: The downloadable content is actually designed to work with a game that is in-progress and doesn't work as well with a new game.
So instead we focused on Knights of the Nine as the new stuff to add to Oblivion that would work well no matter where you are in the game. Downloadable content is something we'd like to support on PS3, but right now that's really in Sony's hands.

Link:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/738/738319p1.html

(Consider yourself pwnd, Cheese-boy)

Steve2 @ Nov 9th 2006 10:02PM

Kiwir:
The guy from Epic is getting his knob polished by MS right now (Gears of War). You'd do well to take any comments from Epic on 360 vs PS3 with a grain of salt right now.

I believe the comment about PS3 OS taking 71M is incorrect. I'll check though, I doubt I'll have an answer today. To be honest, the idea that the 360 OS takes only 16MB seems rather unlikely too. But I have no way to check on that. If MS made it fit in 16MB, kudos to them, but I can hardly see how that would be possible given all the features the MS OS provides.

stumpie @ Nov 9th 2006 10:14PM

Is it just me or does anyone else find it strange that a game that's probably been being worked on for quite some time is still not ready? They have had a ton of time to Port this over for the PS3 and it's still not ready???

What does this say about the PS3 development? sounds like the 360 is going to be the development platform of choice as the PS3 is so freaking difficult to deal with in comparison. If the 360 is the development platform of choice for most titles...it won't matter if the PS3 is capable of achieving better graphics / AI or what have you. It will still be only as good as the 360 stuff if not worse from the complications of dealing with such a crappy development platform.