Game companies don't have to do only one thing. In fact, branching off into a different genre with your proven tech can be a wildly succesful venture. There's nothing bad about it. In fact it can generate news that will draw attention to them for it, and as its been said, "No publicity is bad publicity"
Actually, not so surprising. Right now BL is doing three things: Cleaning code/bugs, using the current code to add features (quests and interactions), and adding in art (new towns/villages/castles).
That actually doesn't require a huge team to do, especially with the proper tools. So it's a perfect time to take all the people who developed the engine and game structure in the first place and shift them over to a new project, especially if it's a project that will require may parts to go to square 1 in development, which a sci-fi themed game would require. No matter how good their underlyign system is, sci-fi will requrie specific tailoring to make it work.