Steps backwards in model options

Today, I was assembling and painting the new plastic Ork Painboy model and a thought occurred to me that I felt deserved a Tablestrop ramble.  

This unit, in both game rules and physical model, is a Nob. It has the same S, T, et cetera in game and is as bulky and imposing as one in the flesh. 
However, I noticed... He's fixed-pose. He has one possible way he can be built, there's no options for poseability - his head, his arms, his one leg... it's all in the same position, no matter what. If I want more than one in my army, it's going to be a large amount of work to convert it to look different, or will require scratch-building one entirely.  

Then I realised something. It never used to be like this.  

When I started in 1998, this was the standard of model around:  

This is the classic Space Marine Captain of the era. If you had a Space Marine army, it probably had this guy in it, at least for the next few years. He was three parts - body, including head, legs, power sword arm all as one piece, his back pack, and the storm bolter hand.
Most people, if they didn't want the storm bolter, would swap that out. It wasn't a hard thing to convert.
If you wanted him to have a different backpack, that was also just a simple swap.
But if you wanted a power fist or a lightning claw, you were shit out of luck unless you had yourself a saw, because this sucker was metal.

As such, people tended not to use any other load-out... You'd give the other weapons to other members of his unit instead. 

He was replaced in the 2000's with this guy. 

This is a multi-part plastic kit. This, at the time, was a standard they were starting to move towards: The kit contained multiple options - it had a power fist, lightning claw, power sword and chainsword, as well as storm bolter, plasma pistol and bolt pistol. It may have had other options, I don't quite remember.
He only came with one head, torso, backpack and legs set, however he was compatible with the rest of the range.
This was also true of the Orks - The 40k and Fantasy Ork Boy kits are actually entirely swappable, and were made that way intentionally in the hopes people would buy more things to customise their armies.
And it worked.
People would often buy this captains set, a command squad set and a tactical squad set and use it to make sergeants for their army, or to make veteran squads.
Because this guy was interchangeable and 100% compatible with every other basic kit coming out, any of his parts could be used on any other kit, and vice versa.
Want that helmet on your Devastator Sergeant? Sure thing, pal!
Putting that cape on your Champion? Not an issue.

This fucker got replaced with this guy.

This was a very recent change.
This guy comes with... TWO head options. Ooh, the fucking options.
Now, take a good look at him. For one minute, just look.
Do you see an issue?
Yeah, that combi-weapon. It's part of the model. Detailed in.
If you want this cape, legs and torso to be used on a guy, you better want a bolter-gravgun combi on him, because if not, you're going to need to do some major re-posing and sculpting to make it work without it.
Sure, that power sword arm is easy to remove - it's built into the shoulder pad, though, so if you want to use the pad, you need to either cut off the arm at the mid-point and keep the angle, or you'll need to use a dremel tool to empty out the shoulder socket to re-use it on a normal model.
Also the legs and cape are one piece.

Does... anyone else...see a massive step backwards here?
We went from a fixed-pose dude that's a pain in the arse to convert, to a multi-part kit that's fully compatible with multiple other kits in the range, back to a fixed-pose dude that's a pain in the arse to convert.

And it's not just the Space Marine range, either. The Ork Warboss recently went onto 'last chance to buy'. We've gone from a guy with poseable weapon arms and a head you could tilt, to.... Grukk Facerippa. A character model in a single pose. Same deal with the previously mentioned Painboy.
The Harlequin characters, the assassins... Most of their new kits, particularly characters, are now being shifted over to singular pose fixed-pose-no-option models.
There are some that are still swappable - The pose of the Flash Gitz is different, but they're still the same scale as Ork Nobz, so you can mix those parts of those kits if you want to.
The loota/ burna kit CAN still be used to take advantage of extra boyz bodies by buying a generic set and using some of those to fill the options out.
However, new kits... seem to be getting less of this.

For example, here's a very recent release - The Space Wolf Wulfen.
This image is from Games Workshop's website and is of their two-boxes-of-the-same deals, for a Murderpack.

Now, I know the image is tiny, but just look for a second. The guy on the far left is... identical in both. The guy next to him is in the exact same pose, just with a hammer or axe, the third guy is identical, the posing of the fourth ones in both rows is... sadly, the closest thing to being in two different poses there is, and the fifth one is the axe-and-hammer swap again.
Their poses are however the exact same thing. You can't even argue that they aren't.

So, when did we go from entirely compatible, quick-swappable kits that could let people easily customise an army, to this...? It's like we're back in second edition.

Don't get me wrong. The kits are far, far more detailed now than they ever were back then. Tons of charm and character, great detail... GW are still one of the front runners in that respect. 

Well... I have to answer this in a kind of flat way.
It's cheaper.
It is way cheaper to design a single kit without having to worry about how it fits in with everything else you've ever gotten made.
You can also make things more dynamic and throw on more details if you don't have to worry about how it's going to fit together, so there ARE legitimate reasons to not do what they used to... But there is one more reason. 

Their competitors don't do it.
90% of their competition make fixed-pose or weapon-swap or limited pose models. No one does what Games Workshop used to do with their level of customising on their kits.
If they don't have to, why should GW have to, either? 

Well, how about because they're meant to be front runners? Their detail and character is still top of the tree, that almost doesn't need to be said... But people love being able to customise their armies quickly and easily.
GW is starting to no longer offer that.
In an ever-competitive market where the small guy can steal sales, you want as many things in your favour as possible.

I do hope GW keeps this only to character models and tries to keep the multi-part interchangeable stuff for the masses of kits.