Google has acknowledged “an issue” has resulted in the delay of the dissemination of invitation codes to early adopters of its streaming service, Stadia, which officially launched yesterday. In some cases, players have already received their packs but are unable to use it without the invitation code.
Though the issue has purportedly only affected “a small fraction” of preorders, a number of customers – myself included – are reporting that despite ordering the Founders’ Edition when preorders went live (in my case, I preordered on June 6th), their orders have still not been shipped and they have yet to receive correspondence from Google inviting them to register their gamertag/nickname – even though this was widely advertised as a perk of the Founder’s Edition.
We’ve now continued to roll out codes in the sequence in which we received your pre-order and look forward to seeing you on Stadia.
Stay tuned to our Stadia Forums for more updates → https://t.co/xDwHjla5uK (2/2)
— Stadia (@GoogleStadia) November 20, 2019
“We’re aware that some who pre-ordered Stadia may not have received their invite codes yet,” Google admitted in a message shared across its social media channels overnight. “We’ve identified and addressed an issue where a small fraction of Stadia access codes were sent out of order.
“We’ve now continued to roll out codes in the sequence in which we received your pre-order and look forward to seeing you on Stadia. Stay tuned to our Stadia Forums for more updates → https://community.stadia.com.”
Google Stadia’s Twitter mentions are full of early adopters chasing up their packs and invitation codes.
At the time of writing, I have not received my code nor my pack. My order still states I’ll receive my Founder’s Edition by the end of today, November 20th, but it has yet to be dispatched.
Just days before its launch, Google confirmed a number of key features originally detailed to early adopters of Google’s streaming subscription service will now be delayed. Further to a Reddit AMA with Google’s Andrey Doronichev and Beri Lee, it appears Stadia’s Founder’s Edition will now launch without achievement notifications, family share, or 4K streaming for PC. It’s also been confirmed that the much-publicised Buddy Pass – which enables players to gift access to a friend – will be delayed for approximately three months.
Early adopters will not be able to use their official Stadia controller on their PC or phone wirelessly, nor use their official Stadia controller with any currently owned Google Chromecast Ultra. They will also be unable to play games in 4K/HDR/5.1 “on any device other than your TV with the Founder’s Edition Chromecast connected”. Support for 4K streaming on PC is expected to follow in 2020.
While Family Sharing is considered a “high priority” for players, right now there’s no way to enable parents to share games with an associated child’s account – which means families hoping to play together over the holidays will have no choice but to buy additional copies of games to play (or buy them on a different platform entirely, of course).
Google revealed details about Stadia’s launch at E3 2019. Launching in 14 countries in November 2019, initially, it will only be available as a £9/$10/€10 per month subscription called Stadia Pro, which will provide 4K/60fps streaming, along with a catalogue of existing titles – much like Xbox Game Pass. Subscribing will also give full access to Destiny 2 and all its content, though that’s a limited time offer.
A service with no monthly fee, called Stadia Base, will launch sometime in 2020, without any library of content. This service will be limited to 1080p streaming. Bandwidth requirements start at just 10mbit/s download and go up to 35mbit/s for the full experience. Both services will require consumers to outright purchase new releases in order to play them, presumably at typical retail prices through a Stadia store (though as yet this hasn’t been detailed).
Just hours before its official launch, Google Stadia almost doubled the number of games coming to the streaming service on launch day.
