Part of the issue is Ron’s comment didn’t age well!
Disney paid $4 billion for Lucasfilm (well they paid $2.21 billion plus 37,076,679 Disney shares), I think it’s pretty fair to say it’s unlikely they’d just sell off Lucasfilm assets. A few months after they bought Lucasfilm they shut down LucasArts development and said they were moving to a licensing model for games - and now they’ve brought back the Lucasfilm Games brand. So really, it seems like this is the logical next step for Monkey Island!
MI1 … 1990
MI2 … 1991 (1 year later)
CMI … 1997 (6 years later)
EMI … 2000 (3 years later)
TMI … 2009 (9 years later)
RMI … 2022 (13 years later)
I know I’ve left out the Special Editions, but for the original game titles this is the largest gap between instalments in the series. It could be that we see another game after this one as well.
As for their so-called risk-adverse strategy with Lucasfilm Games… putting your brand onto stuff that’s essentially 100% externally developed is a risky model in my own opinion. Look at Tales of Monkey Island - it’s a good game, but development was so rushed that it was buggy and there’s audio issues (sometime awful quality voice). I’ll be frank - it didn’t inspire much confidence in Telltale Games to me.
If another developer was to make the next Monkey Island (or Lucasfilm Games graphic adventure) there’s no telling what level of QC Disney is demanding, but based on their TV and movies I’d say Disney’s QC is pretty weak. That’s the part of Ron’s 2018 comment that is hitting the nail - there’s no true value in adventure game IPs if you don’t have a good developer with high standards and a vision. Heck I think that’s why it took six years for LucasArts to make Curse of Monkey Island. Ron had left the company, and the guys involved had to completely re-imagine the IP to make a game.