I'm thinking about the possibility of the SD slot being locked just to read the bundled nintendo SD card.

Its very odd from Nintendo to bundle stuff like that. Look at the Wii for example.

Can't be locked because it will read games directly from the SD card and you can buy extra cards with a max capacity of 32 GB.

If they enable SDXC, and I'm sure they will since it's just a firmware update and they updated the Wii from SD to SDHC that way, capacity has a theoretical maximum of 2 TB's.

so to improve the relationship with third parties regarding the wii they make a follow-up to a handheld that has no problem 3rd party support......... well that makes sense

or am I missing something

You are missing the piracy aspect and the fact the DS itself didn't start off with this kind of support and how this leads into their home console strategy for their next console.   Why wait until then to begin the process?

I wonder why people act surprised about arrogance in  this industry.

I have the notion that the bigger the size of the card, the harder the console can read it.

I mean, for a roughly ~500 mhz processor you wanna have 2 TB of external memory working on the thing?

Even 500 GBs would be insane I think...

It wouldn't be reading all of that. It would just read the designated chunks.

I question the intelligence of people who don't know the difference between "to" and "too".

The only value I can see a 3d home entertainment system having over a 3d handheld is the fact that multiple people can see it together. But that's not worth several thousand dollars!

If you want a slice of the 3d experience, but you don't have 2500 bucks and think 3d glasses are stupid, the 3DS is a very good value (especially with that 3d camera they got on there!)

Arrogance... Look at E3 2005 and 2006. THAT is arogance on Sony's part. Nintendo so far have not said " our console will sell even if there are no games!"

What arrogance?

What? First of all selling a DS for 150$ is more a theft than selling a 3DS at 250 I think, considering the hardware...

Secondly, they're a company, what if they want the DS to continue selling? What if they need profits to buy an exclusive? What if the value of the 3DS is that high??

People have to accept that the fact that it's an handheld means nothing...for about everything it's better than the Wii: lineup, features, multimedia, graphics (on a small screen it's possible even with a less powerful hardware). And the Wii was sold at 25000 Yen. It's not their fault if the dollar dropped that much in the last 4 years. 25000 Yen is 230€, if they sell the console at that price all Europeans will be happy while Americans won't because it means 300$. It's called economy.