Everyone's just afraid of the pegwarmer. It's a new licence for them, they didn't know how well it would do, so they went the safe route, I guess.
Seems like a similar situation to the say the Post Pandemic Edition of The Last of Us for PS3. This was a new IP, so ND only made like 5K or so and now they sell for $400 online. Meanwhile, the majority of SEs accompanying sequels, ie a built in fanbase, are produced in the hundreds of thousands and end up utterly worthless in the end. I bought Halo Reach with what I think is an amazing statue by McFarlane for $22...I digress.
Anyway, now that NECA know how much demand there is, enough to inflate their own prices on their eBay store even, they are more confident to release more stuff.