Breakdown of which Elder Scrolls IV Game of the Year Edtion is the best

When The Elder Scrolls IV came out in March of last year it received multiple Game of the year awards. Then later that year, on PC, Xbox 360 and on PS3, The Nights of the Nine Expansion pack came out. A bunch of smaller content downloads came out about the same time. Included in those are: a pirate ship, a wizards tower, a few extra quests and more. Earlier this year The Shivering Isles was released and added tons of new content; Much more then the previous expansion.

This week (or so) the Game of the Year Edition will be released. This includes the main game, Nights of the Nine, and Shivering Isles. Shivering has to be installed on a Hard Drive (on Xbox and PC at least). I'm not sure exactly how this works or if even it can be installed on more then one Xbox/PC. Not included are the other download-able content, such as horse armor (Not that great) and Mehrunes' Razor (Pretty cool). If you want these you still have to buy them separately.

So this is how the prices for everything break down for an Xbox 360 setup: (Retail prices are from Amazon.com)
Original Elder Scrolls IV (New):$29.99 + Shipping
Nights of the Nine and all the download-able content: 1,930 Microsoft Points (Or about $24.13)
Shivering Isles off of Xbox Live: 2,400 Microsoft Points (Or about $30)
Total: Approximately, $84.13

Elder Scrolls IV: Game of the Year (New): $59.99 + Shipping
The rest of the download-able content: 1,130 Microsoft Points (Or about $14.13)
Total: Approximately, $74.13

So basically if you haven't bought anything, buying the GOTY on the Xbox 360 will save you about ten bucks over buying everything separately on that platform. It's not a bad option if you have an Xbox 360 and haven't bought any version of this game.

The PC version is $50 but doesn't come with the DLC as far as I can tell. So then you have to buy the Nights of the Nine pack that comes with the DLC Plugins. But then it's around 70 bucks total.

All that's added in the $60 PS3 GOTY version is the Shivering Isles (Nights of the Nine came with the PS3 version originally). No DLC here either and I'm not sure if it ever will be supported. This version does have crisper visuals then Xbox, I hear.

None of the different versions are really better then the other. The meat of the game is what's included in every version: the main quest. What it all comes down to is what hardware you have.