What I mean is that it'll be reviewed in wired and the like, and declared a neat toy, but really sucktastic. It's aimed at two groups:

1. Hobbyists/geeks/hackers (like you and like me) who like this lovely little bit of hardware, and will deal with whatever software is on it, without too much complaining about the odd bit of polish or features missing, and without a concern in the world that none of the software houses are releasing any games for it.
2. Gamers who care about gameplay more than graphics, and are persuaded there's plenty of good gameplay in older games for platforms that can be emulated on the Pandora, and in SDL games and the like that can be readily ported.

Those are both pretty niche, so most reviews are going to focus on the lack of cover flow, and that it won't play DS games (yet), and pretty majorly diss it.

The Pandora looked good on paper with its awesome hardware specs, and it does play the few games that run on it very well, but unless you really like Zelda 2 and King's Quest 4, get yourself a DS lite.

The target audience will likely read those reviews, read between the lines, and go order one; so they don't really need to fear that criticism.

But big corporations do fear that sort of review, because it leaves impressions in consumers' minds about the entire brand, so they don't have any serious competition.