The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
You can purchase an old copy of Dragon or Dungeon without much difficulty. Come June of this year, that's impossible here. Seems like a monumentally huge difference to me.
Definitely true, but it still seems like some egregiously bad planning. As others said above, it does feel like a video game release cycle in its messiness and confusion.
Keeping in mind that they announced 5th edition January of 2012 and the basic rules were available in July of 2014 (PHB on shelves August 2014), this is taking much longer to create than a full edition. They announced 5.5 in September of 2021 and at this point there's no release date in sight.