Originally Posted by
twister
You are pretty close.
The SC games being at the "Top" usually gets a bit faster treatment from Apple. As you said, Google Play is almost instant - I don't remember Google ever delaying things.
The SC games are typically 5-7 days after they are submitted for approval. Then as you said, Apple approves them, but they aren't automatically released to the public, it just sits in the Developer account waiting for an SC person to push the button (timed with a server maintenance to upgrade the servers).
Typically if we forecast an update release on a Thursday, the app was submitted to Apple for approval the previous week, usually say Tuesday-Wednesday time frame. Then typically it takes Apple a week to approve it, and we start running the sneak peeks even before it's approved. If all had gone as planned, Apple would have approved it on Tuesday or Wednesday for our Thursday release. But... as I said, the apple event has things a bit jammed up right now.