What store is more reliable to get yours? I'm scared that i won't recieve my pre-order at amazon now from all of this "out of stock" reports. .

shall we start taking guesses on how many of those pre-orders are to customers and how many are to people anticipating high ebay prices?

This is third-hand information so take it with a grain of salt ...

I have been told that many large retailers have adopted policies to prevent allowing excessive pre-orders. The main ones are to only begin pre-orders after they know (approximately) what their initial shipment will be, to limit pre-orders to a fraction of the initial shipment, and to not allow pre-orders if the initial shipment is "too small".

While this is all open to interpretation, from my understanding if a system was only going to have 200,000 to 400,000 units at launch large retailers would (probably) not allow pre-orders; and (unless the system was launching with more than 2,000,000 units) the retailers would not allow more than 50% of the initial shipment to be pre-ordered.

Effectively, if you have a pre-order with a large retailer you will probably receive your system.

very good to hear my amazon order is on lock so im good.

I think anyone interested in getting a 3DS this year should be anticipating high secondary market prices and just deal with pre-ordering despite the typical lackluster launch software line up. If not, they're basically gambling that demand will be met by early production easily enough that anyone will just be able to walk into a store and buy one on any given day.

If the implication is that more than 10-20% of the initial stock is going to end up on Ebay, which was probably the case for Kinect last season, then it's unlikely those secondary prices will stay above even $50 over MSRP for very long. And while I do seem to remember people trying to milk the Wii console flipping trend past the point where each console was maybe grossing $50 over MSRP, it seems less likely this would be repeated with the 3DS.

That said, I'm sure there are a bunch of people pre-ordering every single 3DS they can get their hands on with nothing in mind other than how much they anticipate they'll be able to get on Ebay. It happens with every new console, handheld or other.

You're just being paranoid.

If Amazon isn't able to ship all pre-orders on launch day, it just means you'll be getting one from the next shipment.

One, I don't see Amazon taking more pre-orders than stock they've been alotted, as they have one of the better inventory tracking systems around, typically down to individual units being accounted for. 

Two, on the chance that they end up with significantly less stock than estimated from distro, they're going to stop taking pre-orders, meaning those with standing orders will still have priority with subsequent shipments.

Preordered mine from Amazon as well.  Won't receive it on launch day but that's ok.

I've got one at amazon and one at gamestop right now.  I was hoping to maybe sell one of the 3DS units so I can buy one of the launch games with the profit.

After trading in a ton of games over the last year or so I only have $39 left to pay off my 3DS at gamestop!  3DS is coming soon!

The entire shipment for the US on launch day is known?

This just after a dude told me pre-orders were strangely slow