value, but later releases—at a reduced price, and with more content—proved more popular. The releases, in addition to stirring controversy, raised questions regarding Bethesda's future content release plans, and as to whether expansion pack releases were necessary at all. In August 2006, one Bethesda employee wrote in a post to Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls forums that the company had "no plans to make an expansion for Oblivion". Further questions were raised by a product listing found on game retailer GameStop's website September 11, 2006, listing a Knights of the White Stallion Expansion Pack for Oblivion. The game had a listed shipping date of November 21, 2006. The title was kept on the website only briefly—removed after gaming news site GameSpot sent Bethesda a request for comment on the product. Knights of the Nine began its life as a supposedly "exclusive" quest for the PlayStation 3 release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Along with the confirmation of the PlayStation 3 release on October 9, 2006, some gaming news websites reported that the release would contain "a huge, exclusive quest" focusing on "a new faction, The Knights of the Nine". Some reports prefixed "allegedly" onto statements that the release would be exclusive. Suggestions of exclusivity, in any case, did not last long: an October 17, 2006 Bethesda press release announced that Knights of the Nine content was also scheduled for PC and Xbox 360 releases, eliciting commentary from Joystiq remarking on "how finicky" the word 'exclusive' had come to be, and Kotaku remarking on how "Oblivions PlayStation 3 content didn't stay exclusive for long... or at all". Other sites saw no incongruence in the announcement: GameSpot assumed that Knights of the Nine was simply the earlier Knights of the White Stallion by a different name, and 1UP.com had anticipated the move ever since an IGN interview with Oblivions executive producer Todd Howard, where Howard had described Bethesda's general aim "to have all our content available across all platforms"; the final announcement served only to confirm their suspicions. The October 17 press release set November 21, 2006 as the North American distribution date for the Xbox 360 and PC versions of Knights of the Nine. The European release for the Xbox 360 and PC was set two days later, on November 23. The European release was co-published by Bethesda and Ubisoft. On November 9, 2006, Bethesda clarified earlier statements regarding PC releases,