Straight from the horse's mouth (e-mail reply to my inquiry):
All I can say is hell yeah
We will be officially releasing the Howa pre-fit barrels in a couple of weeks at Shot Show 2018. They will be available for purchase shortly after that. As of right now we will be selling these barrels direct from the factory. We will likely be working with other distributors (Brownells, Optics Planet etc.) in the future. The barrels will be priced similarly to our other pre-fit offerings.
Sincerely,
CBI Technical Support
All I can say is hell yeah