The price of things tends to gravitate toward the production cost.

If the price is below cost to produce, then production slows.

If the price is above cost, profit can be made by creating and selling more.

Faster production increases the difficulty, pushing the cost of generating towards the price.

This happens continually as new hardware is released.

Litecoin is not dead, the market still easily absorbs all the coins minted each day.

Due to the teams indifference to the project, a gap in the market has arisen where a competitor could take advantage of the circumstances by offering a higher value proposition to end users.