Featuritis - Consequences

Consequences

Occasionally, uncontrolled feature creep can lead to products far beyond the scope of what was originally intended. For example, the video game The Elder Scrolls: Arena was originally intended to be a "medieval style gladiator game", however due to feature creep the game quickly expanded into a large open role-playing game, spawning several sequels. Another example of this is the game Shogun: Total War, which was originally intended to be simply a "B-grade" combat simulation game, but also expanded to produce multiple sequels. Microsoft's Windows Vista was planned to be a minor release between Windows XP and then the codenamed Windows "Blackcomb" (Windows 7), but it turned out to become a major release which took 5 years of development. However, a more common consequence of feature creep is to produce the cancellation of the product, which almost invariably becomes more expensive than was originally intended.