Yeah, all the extra peripherals on the board are common. I guess it depends on what you need.
If you are just experimenting then peripherals like an LCD and switches and led's etc are very handy.
The breakout board type is very handy if you want to embed into a project later of course.
The ones I develop are designed to be real easy to use at the software level, drag'n'drop type system development, and they are feature rich but fairly expensive. In fact the older design is probably the worlds most expensive development board which was originally around US$4K!
See:
http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/410101.pdfA newer version is much lower cost, but still not exactly hobbyist category:
http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/410102.pdfThe key here is the software. You get all the IP for various embedded micros and soft cores, c/c++ compiler, VHDL/Verilog, C-to-Hardware compiler, easy to use software stacks etc
I deliberately didn't link to their website or mention their name because the marketing bots are scouring the web and will find this thread...
Dave.