Look at it this way: They could have just delayed the downloadable release until the physical products shipped from DR. That way, none of us would be complaining about other people getting to play with it earlier than us, right? We'd all still be waiting on the release, so there would be no Wait Club.

Instead, all those who ordered ESD would now be complaining: "Hey, we didn't order the physical objects, why should we have to wait on those lousy boxes to ship if the software is ready already? LET US DL NOW!!!! CL 5UX0R5!!!!!"

Ahem.

Life is full of tradeoffs. They get to play with it earlier, we don't have to blow a whole set of ink cartridges printing the manual, and we get a theoretically more stable archival medium.