Sam and Max 2 will have a larger installed fanbase than Bone, methinks, or at least people will remember Freelance Police, so there's a higher chance of this game getting a real world publisher earlier on.

However, remember that Freelance Police was going to be 6 mini cases wrapped around one big "über plot", so downloadable games wouldn't be so bad. In fact, the dev team wanted downloadable cases to be released after the game, but I doubt Lucas Arts would have allowed that.