Immediately. They usually come out first as a physical edition.
Edit: I just realized your title was download editions, so maybe you want to know when THOSE come out (the body of your message seems to imply otherwise though). I think it’s usually a week or two after the physical edition.
I dont think there is a universal deduction. Depending on whether a title has downloadable edition or not. Usually the gap varies between 3-4 days to 2 weeks IMO.
Personally I’d prefer the hard copies.
I remember the mods mentioning, that download editions are normally available within 10 days
Shipping could take 7 days or more, it depends on when they ship it and how long it takes.
It didn’t used to be that all the games had download editions, and the priority to go back and add downloads to games that didn’t have them to begin with is probably fairly low.
Not every game has it for different reasons
For example, did you notice that NONE of Crowds games have a download edition?
Yet all of Zyx’s games do?
I believe it has something to do with the original game company.
Normally it’s G-collections who’s titles become download Editions, the other company’s don’t release download editions very often.
Your observation is only correct for the english localized versions ofd CROWD’s games.
CROWD actually has started selling their original japanese games on dLSITe - though teir catalog there is not complete.
However, I definitely bought my japanese XC3 there.
So I don’t think CROWED is all set against selling their games as downloads. But maybe, the additional workload for converting the already existing localizations into downloadable versions (particulary intergrating the currently favored online-license-verification system) is the problem.
It is probably a combination of technical issues and business decisions. If all you have of a game is an executable, I would not expect it to be a simple task to take the executable and data files, and then apply the DRM layer on top of that. You might be able to, but it would probably depend on a case-by-case basis exactly how the game was originally programmed. You would probably need to go back to the source code of the game and make some modifications, then recompile a new version. This may not even be possible for some older titles (I am given to understand some games had to be passed over for translation because of this issue.)
But certainly I would expect converting back catalog games to the protected formats to be a low priority for many production houses. They don’t have a lot of cash reserves to spend on things like this. You can’t expect much revenue (the long tail theory is pretty much busted now). And what revenue you DO expect, can be reasonably considered to be competing with yourself; money spent on older titles is money NOT spent on new releases.
So if you spend a lot of money to get your entire back catalog on DLSite, either you get a bad ROI (nobody buys the old games even when they’re put back in print) or you get a good ROI, but your new games sales take a hit. It’s much smarter to slowly put the back catalog out, while concentrating on making sure your new releases are available there. Then the “competing with yourself” effect is minimized, and it’s not a large expense all at once. (In fact, this is exactly Nintendo’s strategy for their classic rereleases on Wii.)