I don't know what to tell you dude. Every McFarlane toy of have ever purchased has practically fallen apart in about a week. From the early Spawn toy lines to Alien Vs Predator; they were all a shadow of what they were before coming out of the box in no time.
Maybe things have improved due to the lack of articulation seeing how a good majority of Spawn and McFarlane figures in general turned into slightly articulate statues. I don't know, I stopped giving them a chance after experiencing how brittle the AVP figures were.
Including my early days of collecting, I have never looked at action figures manufactured by McFarlane Toys as toys in the same sense as those produced by Hasbro or Mattel or any other children's toy manufacture. It may be because I started collecting in high school, a time when I no longer played with toys, but I've always seen them as purely collector's items intended for display and would never purchase them with the intent to play with them. In my experience and given at least one pretty obvious sign, they're purpose is display-only. I mean, they all come with display stands, lol. So, to return your serve, I don't know what to tell you. I've owned Neca products and the craftsmanship was not up to par with what was being advertised and the overall quality definitely was not worth the price tag. But, everyone has their opinions and no matter how flawed or misinformed some may be, it's no one's place to try to force you to believe otherwise.
If anything his pathetically shitty and phoned in showing in SoulCal HURT demand for him in anything since. If he IS a guest, NRS will have SUCH an uphill battle to redeem him and make people forget that SC ever happened. Kratos was only ok with all of the limitations that were put on them. Hopefully Spawn will be able to actually use his chains and awesome hellspawn powers even if he does become dangerously close to getting mistaken for Scorpion with a cape by those somehow unfamiliar with him.
From what I've seen, Spawn isn't a dead icon. For over 20 years, people have been clamoring for either a sequel to the 1997 film or a reboot. I've always been a fan of the series (own issues #1 and #2 as well as an additional copy of issue #1 signed by the then-crew). He's still an instantly recognizable character and he'd be a better fit for a modern-day MK title than he was for Soul Calibur 2, which was released in 1998.
Back then, his cape and chains had to be sacrificed as a result of what I can only assume was a very limited polygon count. Of course, I wouldn't expect casual gamers to know anything about polygon count, lol. Not that I'd blindly accuse any of you of being casual gamers because I don't know you well enough to do that. But, it just seems to me that your complaints could be easily rectified if only you realized some of the more blatant reasons as to why a game created in 1998 didn't have a character looking exactly as you unrealistically believed he should.
Besides, Soul Calibur isn't popular enough to have had a negative impact on Spawn's image, lol.