Are release times random?

[Birdsoft]

It seems weird to me, the last 2 of my games that have gone up on the AppStore have released late at night, around midnight last night for my newest one. Is Apple releasing purely by submission order or do they release titles they 'like' during the day and games without quite as much buzz at night.

I also noticed that while I love the fact that they offer promo codes, you dont get a chance to offer early preview codes between "ready for sale" and actual AppStore posting. I did get some out, but the revieweres had the code about 5 hours before it was up.... I guess you have to play guess work on the "release date" setting and have to be willing to hold your ok'd game out of the store for that.. Will anyone play that game...??

Oh, my newest game, because it was released at midnight, already was rotated off the front page new applicaiton list on TouchArcade by the time I got up.... Its called Poker Stacks and did benefit from one great early review at WhatsoniPhone.com (http://www.whatsoniphone.com/blogs/new-app-store-poker-stacks-review) and can be found in the AppStore here (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=298845907&mt=8).

[PoV]

It's not really random per se, but you need to keep an eye on your US holidays and events. Last weekend was American Thanksgiving, and many people want to capitalize on the time immediately following. Also, firmware 2.2 was just released. People will release updates to either fix problem, or to merely ride the publicity wave. Also in general, weekends tend to release at a slower rate than during the week.

So start with 2-3 days, assume that Saturday/Sunday releases are about half the rate of Monday-Friday, include buffer for any holidays or important events coming up, and you can usually estimate how long it'll take.

[Birdsoft]

Hmmmm... well I submitted on Monday and it took until Saturday for it to be ok'd.. On my first application it took almost 2 weeks and my 2nd one was only like 3 days... So Im not really sure how you can predict it? If I could choose Id not keep hitting the weekend releases...Its also unfortunate that the system "release date" exploit is so prevelant.. I was released at midnight, but Im on the 3rd page on release of puzzle games because my release date was still set to around the beginning of the week hoping on a 3 day review...

[Hippieman]

Also, nothing updates at the same time.

Meaning, you can find it via direct link first, then maybe by company, then by category, then on the device rather than iTunes. It's all asynchronous.