If you look at the _getProductCollection()
method in the class Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_New
you will see that the blocks collection has no way to limit the actual list of items.
It can set the page count, using setProductsCount
Theoretically you can use this to limit the result, by not placing a pager as part of the block display, thus only the first page will be shown - the end effect is just a limit of the first page of products.
A while back, I did come up with a away to insert a limit (product_count
) to catalog list filters. In my examples I use the CMS {{block}} tags, but it should also work from standard layout directives
You can read about this via my blog entry: http://www.proxiblue.com.au/blog/smarter-cms-category-product-limits/
This is also available as a module via github: https://github.com/ProxiBlue/CatalogListFilters