A:Answer Jay, from my experience, stores get X amount of special/limited/steelbook editions on launch and then generally that's it. However it's possible that a store might not have sold all of those copies on day 1, so sometimes you can go in and get a limited edition copy or similar even a bit after launch.
However these are "at your own risk" because you never know really how many steelbook copies a store will get and how quickly they go. You might be able to ask an employee to see if they have an idea, but they may not know either.
Safest is to pre-order, but I don't think it's necessarily a requirement.