>>33700243People thought Gen V would be on new hardware.
People thought Gen III remakes would happen during Gen V, and Gen IV remakes would happen during Gen VI.
Guess what? None of that happened. ORAS skipped Gen V and came out in Gen VI and were rushed because there wasn't any intention to make it. In the Game Informer interviews with Masuda, he states that when development of Ruby and Sapphire began in 1999 and they knew that they wouldn't be compatible with prior titles due to how they were being reworked for the ground up, he already had plans for Gen I remakes to be released after them to make the original Pokémon available and Diamond and Pearl to follow them (though the names of "Diamond and Pearl" depended on if "Ruby and Sapphire" could be used). And by the time FRLG came out, there were obvious hints that Gen II remakes were in the cards for the future. FRLG and HGSS each had at least 5 years of foresight, but ORAS was around 2 years going by interviews. If you look at Pokémon availability by Generation, you can see that FRLG and HGSS both fill important roles, and that the only gaps are mythical Pokémon, unlike in later Generations.
I'm going to say that there's an obvious intention to remake Sinnoh since ORAS came out, an intent that probably wasn't around until ORAS was given the go-ahead. I don't think that with promotion beginning at this stage in 2017 that they're going to wait all the way until 2019 to remake Gen IV. It's next year on the Switch or never. Generation VIII will be on new hardware, but I don't think Game Freak is willing to invest in that new hardware being the Switch just yet until they're sure it's a safe investment. After all, Nintendo has spoken about whether the 3DS successor will be a scaled-down Switch or a new platform entirely as being dependent on how well the Switch does.
Switch does bad = new platform entirely, Generation VIII goes here
Switch does good = cost-effective Switch mini for kids, Pokémon stays
