This is not unexpected, and I (basically) was suggesting this as a possibility for the past couple of days ...
This is (effectively) a pre-Alpha development kit, and it would allow developers the opportunity to begin porting their games over to the system but would not be representitive of the final hardware. Since Nintendo probably won't have their CPU/GPU completed for many months they can't give developers the actual hardware that the system will run on; so the development kits would probably be using the unmodified version of the components that the CPU and GPU are based upon. Now, the completed components in the system system may have been designed to have a faster clockspeed than the unmodified components, or the unmodified components may run to hot for the form factor of the system, and the hardware in this development kit could be "underclocked" compared to the final system.
Why would Nintendo release hardware like this?
Because any program that runs on this hardware will also run on their final development kit, and if developers can still get a lot of work done while Nintendo completes hardware. Hypothetically speaking, developers could get games up and running with certain features turned off and begin playtesting and developing features that take advantage of the new controller months before they would be able to if they were forced to wait for more final hardware.
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