~ unpopular opinion time ~
The postgame Hoenn thing was some offhand wishful thinking of mine; I doubt it's likely but it'd be awesome. (Though B2W2 taking place in Hoenn is an even cooler idea :o)
However,
I seriously don't understand why everyone is acting like Ruby and Sapphire remakes are already a thing and just haven't been announced yet. There's no reason whatsoever to remake R/S. FR/LG were done for nostalgia's sake (being the first games) and HG/SS were done because the originals had become unplayable due to the battery issue.
R/S, however:
- are still compatible (however indirectly) with current games through the DS import features
- are still playable (sans a few features) even if the internal battery has died
- were released in that dark age where Pokemon was considered a dead fad, and therefore aren't likely to hold a lot of nostalgic value for the masses outside of Pokemon's cult following (HGSS brought a lot of people back into the fandom; I can't see R/S doing that no matter how much I may love the games, especially since most of said HGSS newcomers are the type who hate everything post-Johto)
-
sold the least out of all the main series Pokemon games (Except for B/W, but they've only been out a year. Interestingly, according to
this, FR/LG was the
lowest-selling duo, indicating that nostalgia value doesn't always mean more sales, and also emphasizing how "dead" Pokemon was in gen 3 - all of the games selling less than 2 million, save for Pokemon Pinball and the Japanese Stadium, are third-gen games).
- are actually widely considered among the worst games in the series! No day/night, lame villains, most older Pokemon unobtainable without trading (which was more difficult back in the day), etc etc. This isn't an opinion of mine, mind you.
The Pokemon franchise as a whole gets enough flack for "running out of ideas" and "trying to sell the same game over and over"; it looks like with this gen they're really trying to break away from that, and I don't see how remaking yet another game would be condusive to that at all. It's just getting redundant. Say there do end up being R/S remakes; after those will people start clamoring for D/P remakes?
That said, I'll be totally happy if there are R/S remakes - I loved R/S too - I just think it's kind of silly that even after they throw us a total curve ball in the form of B2W2 instead of "Pokemon Gray" everyone is still following the logic of "EVERY OTHER GEN DID X SO Y IS INEVITABLE THIS TIME AROUND!!!"