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Actually, looking into the old games a bit:
-Assuming development of R/S started immediately after Crystal's release, they were in development for around two years, likely less.
-The Pokemon Festa R/S demo from June 2002 still had an unfinished party screen, unfinished graphics, and was missing some abilities. This was probably based on an earlier build, though.
-FR/LG came out in January 2004, about one year and one month after R/S.
-Emerald came out eight months after FR/LG.
-Assuming development started right after FR/LG were finished, that means it took a little over half a year for all of Emerald's add-on content.
-Since most of the completely new (instead of just modified) content are things like the PokeNav's rematch function and the Battle Frontier, we can assume that took up most of the development time.
-ORAS already had the base engine for the gen, and most of the maps are based heavily on the old ones, so that shortens the development time for the maingame from the original two years somewhat.
-On the other hand, on top of the usual workload for a remake, they had to design, model, animate and program in 18 new megas, two primals, one forme for Hoopa, the all-new PokeNav Plus functions (mainly the DexNav), not to mention everything needed for Delta Episode.
-They also had to have the script in 7 languages immediately, instead of only needing Japanese and doing the translations later, along with needing debugging time for each version of the script.
-We know from the guidebook interview that they only had a year for all of this.
They likely ran out of time, so they stuck to hinting at what they couldn't finish (like the Battle Frontier). Whether that means the missing stuff will be DLC, in a new version, or if they're just trolling us, who knows, but time was definitely a problem for Gamefreak this time.
