Until the product is done, I wouldn't expect to see feedback. After all, the only folks using it enough to offer real feedback are the company staff and maybe some external testers (although the latter are going to only enter into the mix near the tail end) - all of them are going to be working under NDA and not allowed to talk. Not to mention that firmware is such a big part of today's consumer electronics, and getting the firmware right can make a significant difference on performance. Commenting on performance with incomplete firmware is tricky business, even when you are able to do so.
You won't see it go to a professional reviewer before launch. First, the reviewer is only going to be useful to any of us if he has final hardware and final firmware. Second, most professional reviewers distribute through channels that take months to go from delivery of review sample to publishing (even for online "magazines" like Secrets or Ultimate AV). Combine those two, and you get a situation where the product launch gets put on hold for several months just so that review can be published. That's not going to happen.

What we are likely to see is at least some feedback from Sherwood R-972 owners prior to the arrival of the Model 997. That 60+ day separation in product launches (and I'm not going to assume that it will be exactly 60 days, as Murphy's Law is nearly as inflexible as the law of gravity) will allow for some feedback of that type, with Trinnov likely to be the biggest subject of discussion. My concern is that many Sherwood customers are going to be buying from dealers rather than through online channels and are thus not as likely to be active in an online forum, so their experience is less likely to show up online readily. There's a good chance that we won't have a really useful collection of user feedback with the shared platform in hand until the gunslingers around here start using the 997 and posting about it. I'd expect a much higher percentage of 997 owners to speak up in forums than R-972 owners. That first month on the market should generate a lot of information.