Ofcourse theres a potential for brickwave, hell all of use might end up with bricks any time. That's why this shit takes some time to lower chances for that.There are rumors about new 3ds bricks (the ambassador one) , I don't know if they are true, and Garyopa said that they need to test it in the eu new 3ds.
You maybe are right with the development stage. My concern is if the reason for what that they are delaying is because of the potential brick wave, and they knew about this for some time now.