Expect Some Lag With Stadia Founder's Edition Deliveries

We're less than a month from the launch of Google's Stadia game streaming service, and we only learned its official release date a week ago. Though Google has made clear that only buyers of the now sold-out Founder's Edition would be able to play Stadia at launch, the company has clarified that those pre-orders will be shipped out in the order they were received. That means some Stadia early adopters will actually have to wait a few more days for their bundles to arrive.

In a statement to The Verge, Google confirms that the Stadia Founder's Edition bundles will be delivered on a first-come, first-serve basis. Google points to a blog post announcing Stadia's November 19 launch date, where it states that the Founder's Edition will "start arriving on gamers' doorsteps" come the release date, taking care not to state that all pre-orders will arrive at the same time.

In June, Google announced that its premium Stadia Pro service would launch in November for Founder's Edition buyers before expanding in early 2020 to include Stadia Base, a free service through which players can purchase and play games over Stadia.

The $130 USD Founder's Edition won't be the only way to play on Stadia before the release of Stadia Base, as Google has replaced the sold-out bundle with a nearly identical $130 Premiere Edition. The only difference between the two is that the Premiere edition comes with a standard white Stadia controller and will start shipping after the Founder's Editions. Currently, Google's store page says the Premiere Edition will still ship sometime in November.

News of potential delays for Founder's Edition buyers is the second bit of fine print Google has had to address since announcing the Stadia launch date. Last week, Google revealed that the Stadia controller's much-vaunted wireless functionality would only work with Chromecast Ultras at launch. In recent weeks, talk about future plans for "negative latency" and a new study with dire estimates concerning Stadia's bandwidth usage have also raised questions about the service's viability.

For more on Stadia and the Stadia Pro subscription plan, check out USG's guide to Google's ambitious game streaming service.