Licensing is difficult – and international licensing is extra-difficult. Licensing is also expensive. With almost no exceptions, the more popular the media property, the more money the owner wants.
Thus, the effort and expense to set up a license with a huge publisher like Kodansha, to adapt a property that scored a Hollywood movie, are 100% certain . . . but the payoff isn't guaranteed, as there's no promise of overlap between "likes GitS" and "likes GURPS."
This is the more-or-less generic answer to all "Why not adapt this popular property for instant success?" questions. The huge cash and time buy-ins are out of reach. We adapt more obscure stuff largely because it's within our reach. SJ Games is a small company of around 30 people that relies on the last project to pay for the next one, not a major publisher with cash reserves and multiple creative teams.
Now if a media property owner liked GURPS and approached SJ Games, that would be a different conversation. That's more or less how GURPS Wildcards happened back in the day, for instance. But I doubt that anyone at Kodansha even knows what a "GURPS" is.
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Thus, the effort and expense to set up a license with a huge publisher like Kodansha, to adapt a property that scored a Hollywood movie, are 100% certain . . . but the payoff isn't guaranteed, as there's no promise of overlap between "likes GitS" and "likes GURPS."
This is the more-or-less generic answer to all "Why not adapt this popular property for instant success?" questions. The huge cash and time buy-ins are out of reach. We adapt more obscure stuff largely because it's within our reach. SJ Games is a small company of around 30 people that relies on the last project to pay for the next one, not a major publisher with cash reserves and multiple creative teams.
Now if a media property owner liked GURPS and approached SJ Games, that would be a different conversation. That's more or less how GURPS Wildcards happened back in the day, for instance. But I doubt that anyone at Kodansha even knows what a "GURPS" is.