Continuing the theme of official announcements, it's my great pleasure to tell you all that Shivering Isles, the expansion for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion will be released for both PC and Xbox 360 in Autumn this year.

We brought you the rumour, but now it's been confirmed. More than 30 hours of new gameplay await you in an entirely new plane of Oblivion - the realm of the Daedric Prince of Madness, Sheogorath. Because it simply adds to the existing world, you can even continue playing with your existing character - or create a new one just to check out the new content.

"We're thrilled with the response that Oblivion has received to date and feel that Shivering Isles will offer a whole new and different experience to anyone who played and enjoyed Oblivion," said Todd Howard, executive producer for The Elder Scrolls.

Players explore the two extreme sides of the god's madness within the Realm of Sheogorath - both the sublimely creative and the completely psychotic. Sheogorath himself is looking to you to be his champion - defend his realm and its inhabitants from destruction, if you have the strength to tame a realm fraught with paranoia and despair, to survive his trials, to wear the mantle of a God.

Both sides of the landscape - Mania and Dementia - are filled with a bizarre landscape, with vast twisting dungeons mirroring the roots of the trees they lurk wihin. More than a dozen new creatures come with the new pack - skeletal Shambles, Flesh Atronachs, amphibious Grummites and hideous insects. To help, there are all-new items, ingredients and spells - and Crucible and Bliss have talented craftsmen to forge new weapons and armour to your specifications.

"The enthusiastic response we've received to our downloadable content has been overwhelming, and we're excited to bring Oblivion fans a full expansion," said Vlatko Andonov, president of Bethesda Softworks. "The world we've created for Shivering Isles is unlike anything you've seen or played in Oblivion and we can't wait for folks to play it."

2006 saw more than three million copies of Oblivion sold, after a March launch - and the game picked up countless accolades and awards, including Game of the year and RPG of the Year, as well as the #1 ranking in a UK list of the top 100 games of all time, and maintaining the highest rating of all Xbox 360 games over at GameRankings.

Details about launch are shady at this point, but we can tell you that the PC version will be a hardcopy one you can pick up in a pretty box, and the X360 copy looks like it'll be downloadable through Xbox Live Marketplace. Timeframe is "Spring 2007" for our Northern friends, so hopefully we'll see it in about April-ish.