I can almost understand Hasbro's reluctance to do the ultimate figure of anything, since they probably don't want to put a cap on something when they think they have years left in the line.
The thing that I was wondering about though is this: if Hasbro did an "ultimate" version of a main character, wouldn't it save them money in the long run by having one figure they could rerelease 14000 times so they wouldn't have any need to go back and do a completely new mold every time they wanted to release it?
Let's say that Hasbro said "Let's do the ultimate ROTS-era Obi-Wan Kenobi" (which in my eyes, they've done with the Pilot Obi-Wan). The figure is perfect in every way, with no real room for improvement outside of possibly a cloth cloak. Due to this figure being made, they never again have to do a new mold of ROTS-era Obi-Wan because they always have the "perfect" mold to fall back on. This frees up more development dollars that they would have spent on another mold, and they can make more characters that normally wouldn't get made.
Even though the SA Obi-Wan might be a bit more costly now that it's a new piece, in a hypothetical 10 years from now, they will still be making money on it from collectors both old and new: old collectors will buy it due to the packaging change, and new collectors will be thrilled to get a great Obi-Wan from ROTS that doesn't kick or slash. I would think it would cost Hasbro less and in turn, give them more profit in the long-run to do one perfect sculpt and reissue, reissue, reissue, than it would to do 10 different sculpts of the same character with not a single one achieving perfection.
If you look at the Clones released thus far in the ROTS line, a lot of money could have been saved had Hasbro simply had a SA Clone body that they could repaint 50 thousand times into all the different batallions. Use the same body and head for the Utapau clones, the Coruscant gray clones, the Shocktroopers, the 501st, and any other EU Clone designs, and be done with it. Instead, they release two different Clone sculpts (6 and 41), they rerelease the CW SA Clone body with a ROTS head, and keep cranking out those EU PVC 3-packs.
I think the truth of the matter is that Hasbro had a mold (the AT-TE Gunner) that although it had some obvious flaws, had only been utilized once while the other Clone molds had been used two or three times already. Instead of using the 41 mold for the third time, they would rather use the 38 mold for the second time, so they could get more money out of that mold. But then if they'd only done one Clone Grunt mold to begin with, they'd be making far more money off that mold than they would off 4 different Clone Trooper molds rereleased multiple times.