Just my speculations... I don't work for any of these guys, I'm a freelancer (I've had people mistake me for an official ICE employee before).
A new version would take, in my opinion, at least a couple years to get near completion. To give you guys all an idea, when we did the Channeling Companion the time frame that I sent in the proposal to hitting the shelves was right at about one year... and that was relatively quick for a full fledged ICE book. Even once new goals and desired changes are agreed upon it still takes quite some time to get the books put together and to the 'shelf'. However, it's my opinion if that if RM wants to remain a viable system a new version is what's required even if it is more along the lines of light modification, fine tuning and re-organization.
The current version, supported or not up to this point, is RMFRP. But RM2 (RMC essentially) is still quite popular with the vocal fan base. It's difficult to know the real numbers without at least having a look at the sales of all the various publications and even then it would be hard to draw a conclusion due to the fact that it's been quite some time since a RMFRP publication was put out (RMQ's don't count). I won't get into what I think the reasons are that RMFRP stopped getting worked on, the fact that this is happening is a big enough indicator that whatever they were it wasn't good enough. Although I will say with "new management" you might see some authors become more willing to consider new projects, so there's some hope there. The downside is things will move slowly since, essentially, you're going to have most the people controlling the development of the system doing it as their secondary 'job'. Although, not to spit on anyone's grave, considering the lack of progress on RMFRP in the past years it might actually see an increase in efforts.
So, as someone else pointed out, for the near future I think things will likely remain largely as-is. RMFRP is still the 'current' version, RMC projects will likely still be worked on short term, but a new version is almost surely the long term goal. In my opinion if the system wants to stay alive it HAS to be the long term goal. HARP, while it has seen some slowing appears to be in fairly good shape for the most part and, if anything is done to it I think it should become the gateway game to RM (much as MERP used to be) depending on how any potential changes to RM go. The spell learning mechanic is the one major difference between the two systems and could pose a problem attempting to make them sister systems.
In my opinion the biggest serious issue faced will be marketing. When you have a print on demand product that basically means you don't have a product on the shelf, which is a big problem. A large percentage of the game store owners do not even realize there was a second incarnation of ICE, and now there may not even be books printed for them to order to put on their shelves if/when they discover there's a third incarnation of ICE. If anyone expects ICE products to become anywhere near as popular as they used to be there needs to be an ad campaign and there needs to be a convention presence of some sort. Fans can handle word of mouth, and in my opinion that is the only advertising that the game systems have seen for a long time. Fans may also be able to handle the convention presence if an effort is made to officially organize it - this is something of a soap box of mine with Mjolnir. I don't think they ever really took marketing seriously. They had people that could have gone so far as establishing and manning a booth in the merchant rooms of some of the conventions, let alone run ICE based game events at those conventions, if they'd just purchased the space (yes, I know, that takes $$$) and provided some product. ICE staff themselves should have been able to attend two of the the biggest cons however as it's about a 450mile trip to either GenCon or Origins. I don't know how many times I've said this to various ICE staff over the years: If you want people to know you're around, GenCon is the place to be. My opinion is that saying you don't 'have the money' to go to GenCon is saying that you don't have the money to survive as a commercially viable game system. If you expect to gain new customers you must advertise. Scrape and scratch up every friggin last dime you can to get there at least just once. Tell the world you exist again. Ask fans that are going to be there anyhow volunteer to help setup, man the booth, hell ask for donations is you have to. Just GO TO GENCON.
