Back in 2007, NECA released a series of highly popular action figures based on the Playstation 2 hit game God of War. Now, with the PS3 more popular than ever (thanks to last year’s price cut–even I have one now) and the highly-anticipated God of War III due out in March, where the hell are the new action figures? Well, I have a theory about that…

First, there’s this quote from an interview with NECA’s Randy Falk:

Q: We are eagerly anticipating the release of the new God of War 3 game next year and we are just as excited about getting a new updated Kratos action figure to coincide with its release. Can you give us an update on the new Kratos figure? Will the new figure feature the Cestus weapons and extra articulation?

A: Sadly, I don’t have any good news to share on this. We did create an entirely new Kratos figure with more articulation and the Cestus weapon and we’re really proud of this figure. However, certain licensing issues have not made it possible for us to release this figure. Someday in the future we will show you images and details as to what might have been.

What could these licensing issues be? Last night at Newbury Comics I noticed something: DC Unlimited’s Resistance: Fall of Man and Ratchet & Clank toy lines both had a big, fat “PS3” logo on top of the blister. Add to that their upcoming figures based on PS3 exclusives–Heavenly Sword and Twisted Metal–and it seems pretty clear that DC Unlimited has wrapped up some sort of exclusive or near-exclusive toy license with Sony (or maybe just a very cozy working relationship). And I can certainly see how that could create licensing problems for NECA and GoW.

As for why there aren’t any figures announced yet, that’s easy: assuming they have the license, DC Unlimited probably hasn’t had enough time to make them yet. Even the Heavenly Sword, Twisted Metal and Mass Effect figures won’t be out until this summer.

If DCUL does indeed have the GoW license, I’m curious to see what they do with it–some of the above figure lines have decent articulation, and given how well the NECA GoW figures sold, I would hope DCUL recognizes how important a selling point the figures’ articulation was. However, I sure do wish we could have gotten that last NECA Kratos–I just know he would have had the ab crunch the character so desperately needs.