Publishers lock horns over Oblivion expansion

Is there a publisher scrap going on in the corridors of power over The Elder Scrolls IV expansion Shivering Isles?

In the red corner: 2K Games, who published the original game on PC and Xbox 360 and is publishing the expansion for the same platforms.

In the blue corner: Ubisoft, which co-published Oblivion PC retail pack Knights of the Nine with developer Bethesda in Europe and is doing the same with Oblivion on PS3 and PSP outing The Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion.

So, with Bethesda recently confirming that Shivering Isles is coming to PS3, which company is going to land publishing - or co-publishing - rights on PS3?

We've heard that 2K Games wasn't too happy that they did the PR for Oblivion and now co-publishing rights for the PS3 and PSP titles have been given to Ubisoft. But with lucrative sales of Shivering Isles virtually a dead cert, 2K surely wouldn't pass up publishing opportunities for the expansion on PS3.

And has Ubisoft been fighting to get publishing rights to Shivering Isles on all three platforms?

Putting on the CVG detectiv hat, we've done a bit of snooping around and, while UK sources close to both publishers couldn't shed any real light on the publishing split over Shivering Isles and know little about publishing plans for Shivering Isles on PS3 at this stage, they did describe the whole Oblivion publishing situation as "slightly complicated". We'd say that's an understatement.

A source told us that the publishing situation with Oblivion is actually "more down to the way Bethesda works", and spoke of a surprise that Ubisoft hasn't had complete publishing rights with Oblivion as it handled The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

Big dollar signs will have been twirling around eyeballs where Oblivion publishing is concerned, and boy would we love to have been a fly on the wall when deals were thrashed out and struck.

At the end of the day though, we're just happy that we can sit back and let the big boys fight it out; after all, whatever happens - or has happened already - in the higher echelons of Bethesda, 2K and Ubisoft, Shivering Isles is still going to be awesome.

via cvg