Yeah, sadly Kodansha's been saying that basically ever since they started publishing their own stuff in-house instead of via Del Rey like they used to. While it's frustrating to be sure (I know I, myself, often complain about Viz for example sitting on perfectly good licenses and not reprinting or finishing them)...I can't really say I'm surprised at their lack of interest.
Over the last few months, I've been doing a lot more research into manga publishing and how it goes on here in the states. Publishing manga (especially now, when the market is so unreliable) is a really tough business. It's completely different than publishing regular books, or even American comics. The Deconstructing Comics podcast recently had a great interview with Deb Aoki about the inner workings of the manga industry in America, and I learned a lot listening to it!
http://deconstructingcomics.com/?p=3240 For example, normally when bookstores buy books, the bookstore basically owns them, and if they don't sell, they sell them off to someone else wholesale (like a reseller) to at least get back most of what they paid for the books. With manga, bookstores can send back any and all books theybuy from the manga publishersthat haven't sold if they think they're sitting on the shelf too long, and the manga publishing company has to give them a FULL REFUND. (This is one of the reasons Tokyopop probably went bankrupt--even though they were releasing a TON of manga, sometimes half or more of their titles would be sent back and they had to pay back a lot of refunds to LOTS of stores.)
And even the big name titles still don't make as much money as you'd think. When you see sales ranking lists for manga, they often don't have the actual sales numbers...but when you do find them, they're usually on the low side in comparison to figures you'd see for a top 10 American book sales list. For example, even a title like Sailor Moon--which is extremely popular and lots of fans will buy--will only sell maybe 1,000 copies in a month (IF that, a more realistic number is probably around 900 or so I hear). And that will be the best selling manga title that month, usually. Which means the lowest selling titles will be closer to only 300-400 sales, sometimes even less. Compared to the sales in Japan, that doesn't even come close to the numbers Japan's best-sellers are getting. Manga seems to be reverting back to a niche market here, maybe not as small as it was when, say, the bulk of us were younger...but it's definitely not the hot-selling item it was at the height of the "manga boom" in the early 2000s. And back when it was a niche item, the prices were higher. Because of the pricing standard of "around $10" Tokyopop set in the 00s, customers still expect to only pay that much. So if the cover price is more than that, many will automatically not be interested.
So...because of that, a lot of companies are trying to play it safe. Which is understandable. A lot of companies have folded over, and no one wants that to keep happening. Viz will stay strong because they don't have all their eggs in one basket, but they're still trying to make sure they'll make a decent profit. Kodansha's no different, I'm sure--they may be a huge company in Japan, but in America, they have to make sure that what they release has enough appeal to sell so that they don't lose money. Sadly, right now this is just how the market is.
That's not to say that it won't get better, though. It seems like sales for most manga has steadily increased over time, just veeeeeery slooooooowly. And while Kodansha themselves my not be interested in rescuing older titles, I know for example Dark Horse has been rescuing a lot of CLAMP's previous work from Tokyopop. So, it's not impossible that other companies could rescue titles, or even pick up titles that Kodansha themselves might not want to risk. Stranger things have happened.
Sorry for playing devil's advocate here with the long reply...but after looking into what goes on behind the scenes trying to get manga out to fans, I think I do have a little more sympathy for all the work that goes into doing it (and for such a little return). I do think that sometimes, the interns they get to answer fan/customer questions like these do come off as a little snarky or blunt, though probably unintentionally....(I personally think Vertical's is a little worse, though. Sometimes they seriously just give "No." answers. >__> )
I think that's why I've been so adamant on maintaining a blog and putting out really just classics that I don't want to fall into obscurity. But more and more on tumblr I read awesome posts like "Husband got me into Ranma 1/2" or "friend forced me to watch Macross, and it's amazing" and this makes me believe that there is a way, there has to be, to rescue old titles and get people reading them. Get them into it. Because the people who are friends with those that don't read much manga or aren't into yet, they're the only ones keeping it alive at this point.