Another consipiracy theory.....
C: "This is a great product, can we be a sales channel?"
N: "What's in it for us. We've had thousands of people sign up for our email alert on when it's going to be available and we haven't even told them about it yet."
C: "If you can blow off your existing pre-orders a while and ramp up production, we'll be your sales channel AND you can charge us retail price because this is such a cool product, we can charge $50 more and people will still buy it."
N: "Heck, what do we have to loose? We've delayed this product a few times already, what's it going to hurt to delay another month or two - OK, you've got a deal."