Well, to be fair with them since they wanted a new story from which to start the franchise again in order to revolutionalize the series and create a universe from which they could provide us more games, thus earning more buyers, the new Dante had to be different.
The old Dante is considered by many fans to be super-special-awesome. So if they made him appear weaker, different, etc, it'll probably anger the fans anyway. So what remains to be done? Make a new Dante which no one yet knows and doing anything to him won't annoy anyone since he doesn't have any fans yet.