A $500k tester's depreciation is based on a 10+ year service life. The ones that make it past that point turn into security nightmares and profit centers at the same time.
These are large and complex machines, with hundreds or thousands of moving parts. A competent reverse engineer and driver developer likely could solve many of the driver interface issues and move things to newer platforms, but why invest hundreds of thousands per year in maybe updating something that still works? Who is going to pay for that? Oh, you want to raise your rates to pay for it? I guess they'll move all of their testing development to the competitor in Asia.
This isnt some big name you have heard of, but this is one of the places that all the big names go to to test their silicon during development.