They developed the idea of a smaller Maserati as they eventually realized there couldn't be a flagship for Alfa and Maserati based on the next QP, too many tradeoffs for both models.
Should be ready by the end of 2012 or slightly more, not sure about the Alfa version but I guess it will be shown at about the same time.
So yeah, RWD is coming back. I guess that can suggest no SRT8 for us though, to avoid overlapping?