Perhaps, but there's another market lurking out there: FPS types and those graduating from Rockstar's sandbox games. With minimal investment the RM engine can appeal to them, and possibly lure them into tabletop gaming.
I'm skeptical anyone will make much headway with that crowd without a well known licensed tie in like RM gained with LOTR or others did with Star Wars.
I honestly do not think that ICE have the financial resources to pull off a tie in like that.
From a marketing point of view ICE have three assets.
The first is something called publisher points or PPP. These are awarded by OneBookShelf on a basis of 10 + 1 per $10 worth of goods sold each month. So ICE have sold something like $70,000 worth of products and taking time into account should have somewhere in the region of 7000-8000 PPP. They can spend PPP to make any eventual product 'Deal of the day' on the PBS network of sites at a cost of about 450PPP per day. So they could feature for about 15 days. I would scatter that so the feature does not just become invisible wallpaper. That should drive some sales and that should generate some more PPP which can buy more on site advertising. PPP are free and ICE should be sat on a significant pile of them.
The second asset is their own brand name. You could trot Nicholas and to some extent Kevin out to give blog interviews and talk about RMU and Shadow World. You should not under estimate this. You should not under estimate the time it takes to build the goodwill of the bloggers or the influence they can exert. As an example of this, ICE has a long established game and a devoted community. Because ICE have only publicised the Beta 2 downloads to this community (despite it being a public playtest) the PDFs have been downloaded 138 times since June 11, 2015, nearly three and a half years. I am a single individual with a blog but I interact with other bloggers where I frequently comment on and engage with their content. The biggest names I work with are probably stargazer's world and take on rules. I also engage with the FAR system. Most of those you will have never heard of, which is sort of the point, I am a minnow in a small pool, no brand, no community. My own public playtest has been downloaded 195 times in four weeks. It is going to take time and effort to build public awareness again but if you want to appear like a giant of the games industry you need to make some noise. Trying to do that AFTER the product launch is a really bad idea as these things take time to build up and before you know it your game is no longer 'new' and other more publicity savvy publishers have stolen your moment with their own releases.
Finally, ICE have a very small war chest of cash reserves. If you want to pay for advertising on gaming sites or even get professionally written press releases to circulate then these all cost money. I normally allow 16 to 20 weeks lead time between engaging a PR agency and when I want the marketing to hit the presses or peoples screens.
Regarding licenses there is often more than one way to skin a cat.
If we take Tales from the Loop as an example or case study. It is widely regarded as as close to a Stranger Things rpg as you can get without having the TV programme title on the book. Stranger things first aired in July 2016, the full Tale from the Loop Rules were released in June 2017, just 11 months afterwards but also when ST was still at the peak of its popularity.
If one looks at RMU as a lot of lego brick sized blocks, each skill is a block, each weapon is a block, or profession is a block; one can have a whole box of blocks that can be used to build any system extremely quickly and all that is then needed is the prose to create the setting and style. The sort of thing I mean is... Netflix has bought the rights to a BBC series called The Bodyguard (nothing to do with Kevin Costner!). That is due to become a Netflix Original. So by using the mix and match/lego brick approach one could put together an RPG where the PCs form part of a close protection unit against a world of politics and international intrigue. One could pillage/paraphrase the background material from wikipedia and imdb for the setting. The IMDB episode guide basically gives you an entire 6 step adventure you can use for 'inspiration' to build an adventure that would form the second half of the core rulebook. One could get "Specialist Protection - A contemporary RPG thriller against a backdrop of the Special Protection Branch of London's Metropolitan Police (powered by the Rolemaster Engine)." There is absolutely no reason not to get that together and and ready for launch in time to run alongside the Netflix release. In fact I think I could copy and paste most of it from HARP FS (I lost my SM books a few years ago in a house move) and create that game in a weekend. I would not need any of the Sci Fi professions, no sci fi skills, no spaceships or high tech gear, no psions, no alien races, no races at all as you can just build Human into everything. Strip back the combat to martial arts and guns. Copy and paste as much content as I can from wikipedia and IMDB and then put it all in my own words. The closest game to what I am describing here, currently on sale, is a supplement for Twilight2000 released in 2004. Basically you would get a Netflix tie in for free with a completely open and empty market place. Create the game and then get out there and tell everyone that "Specialist Protection is the game for everyone who loves The Bodyguard and wants to explore a world of Royalty and Specialist Protection." It will be the interviews and social media shares and quotes that create the web of bonds between the game and TV show. At no point do you say "this is the official game of..." but you can list the TV series as inspiration along with other series in the genre.
This is basically a rinse and repeat idea, as intothatdarkness says...
With minimal investment the RM engine can appeal to them, and possibly lure them into tabletop gaming.
A 'Generic' RPG ruleset has to be able to cope with everything and anything. A very specific RPG ruleset only has to deal with a very specific set of situations. It can therefore for smaller, only the skills and weapons that you will actually need, if you need magic then only the magic required for that specific cultural heritage. Everything that is not relevent can be discarded and when you do that then most of the hangover criticisms of RM, too big, too many options, too many charts and so on all disappear.
