i've seen the camera at Photokina behind glass and wasn't impresses, as it looked like a dummy
two days ago I've handled one at a Roadshow and it is working! you can even take pictures with it.
if Leica is not changing the design, I doubt this camera will get a lot of professional buyers.
it is beatifull, very heavy and well made, but it hardly has any physical contolls. Exposure compensation has to be done by menu, AE and AF seem to be non-separatable, this thing just doesn't have enough buttons! Michael R. will cry about not having a MLU button. I just wonder, how Leica manage to totally Ignore any test report about the M8, where 90% of the testers complain about not having an easily accessible EV-compensation.
I am sure the explored their market possibilities, but they probably are not targeting working pros.
They said it's released in about a year.