Hm, I was kind of mixed at the time, and didn't think on this as much.
Like yeah, people have speculated and hoped for a R/S remake for a long time, and there were various references to Hoenn from the other pokemon games, like from those travelers, talking about the region they were from, and the World Championships from B2W2, etc, etc. I of course was on the same boat and hoped for Hoenn remakes too, but, I didn't really have any expectations that they would actually make them, because I guess I was more interested in new pokemon games, set in new regions.
Still, this is a good thing! I'm glad they actually went on board with this - it was definitely a nice surprise for a while, haha. <33