Some of you will probably know the popular series of adventure games Lucasfilm (and later on Lucasarts) made, starting with "Labyrinth" and "Maniac Mansion" and ending with great games like "Grim Fandango" (it had very poor sales figures, although it was a superb game with an excellent story) and "Monkey Island 4" (a mediocre attempt to continue the series, it's low sale figures were kinda justified, imho).

"Sam'n'Max hit the road" was a significant milestone in the lines of great adventure games made by Lucasarts. It was an homage to the comic books and the cartoon series with these two characters (there already had been occasional cameos in several Lucasarts games before that).

It was only about a year ago that Lucasarts finally announced a sequel that really rekindled many adventure game fans' hopes that Lucasarts would step back into the limelight, ceasing to just manage Lucasfilm's movie licenses and outsourcing game development to companies like Factor5 and Ravensoftware.

Now, Mike Nelson (Vice president of Lucasarts' finance and operations department) announced the discontinuation of the development of the highly anticipated adventure game:

"After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we've decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC." (For more information on Sam'n'Max and related information, visit the page that served as the source for this article).

Edit: Added hotlinks to factor5 and ravensoft for informational purposes and italicised the quote.