What you need to know
- The Founder's Edition of Stadia is sold out.
- Unless you were one of the first to buy you won't play on launch day.
- This is very not cool.
Correction
It was pointed out to me that I misunderstood. I read it to mean even if you had the hardware you wouldn't be able to play Stadia until you were allowed access. This is incorrect; you may not receive the hardware on the 19th unless you were one of the first to order it.
This is still pretty poor on Google's part. The whole point of a preorder system is to get your product on the day of launch. Google knew how many Founder's Edition Stadia's it had, there is no reason for them not to ship them all out, to be ready in time for November 19.
I have left the original article untouched so you can see my error.
Things just keep getting worse for those of us who preordered the Founder's Edition of Stadia, the gaming ecosystem from Google. First, we found out that our controllers wouldn't work wirelessly unless connected to a Chromecast Ultra, and now The Verge have been told that not everyone who ordered a Founder's Edition, and certainly no one who orders the new Premiere Edition, will get to play on the launch day of November 19, 2019.
Google pointed us at its blog post from last week and sure enough, it technically says that Founder's Editions will only "start arriving" on November 19th — and that you might only get to play starting at 9AM PT that day if "you were one of the first gamers who pre-ordered."
It seems that Stadia will happen on a "first come, first served" basis and that if you weren't an early adopter you may not get the chance to play on launch day. Personally I ordered mine on the day Google announced Stadia, but I could have been among thousands to do so. In theory, I could be waiting until some arbitrarily decided date before I can play for the equipment I have bought. It's just not cool.
While I still like the idea of Stadia, it's becoming apparent that the execution by Google leaves a lot to be desired. It's easy to see why people might follow our own Joe Maring into canceling their preorders. If you are still interested in picking up the Premiere Edition of Google Stadia it's available now to preorder on the Google Store.
