Those are exactly my thoughts on the situation and that plan makes perfect sense with Merlin. I wasn't expecting it out until at least Q3.
Also the SLAM engine was designed to port games in a short amount of time, if you're starting from scratch there is no way it's going to take a couple months to develop a game. I bet the time that needs to be dedicated to designing a game, it's artwork, user interactions, etc is more than a month in most cases...I know that's the case with other software.
BTW, did you talk to someone at DNAD directly?
...and welcome to the board :)