Don't party just yet.

Quick reminder: It's the third Switch's month available in the market, there's plenty room for a new Pokemon announcement. Try to not shit on your pants when you will be proven wrong.

Weren't you adament like a year ago that a Nintendo system with multiple performance modes was never, ever going to happen because programmers would not be able to optimize their games (ditto for a PS4 Pro and Scorpio)?

This is just hilarious, despite the fact that gamefreak does this every gen your level of reasoning is so blinded by the need to see what you want to see that you can't even see things as they are. Can't wait to see what kind of excuses you make in the future when someone remembers you this post.

The issue is unlike WW and TP, Sun and Moon lack the basic polygonal complexity to just slap some HD textures on and call it a day.  Plus I guarantee that engine is not designed for any HD features at all and would be a terrible candidate for that approach.  It would look spectacularly bad and potentially run like hot garbage.  And to the outside gaming world, it would look like the cheapest port in history.  There's no way they would do that to their brand in transition to the Switch.  

People are complaining about "oh another port" with Pokken, but what you suggest would be a far worse case of that.  Besides, they have their big gun for the Holiday period.  No sense putting Pokemon there too.  Save it for an important slot in 2018.

I think they will.  This is basically a low effort quick cash in.  Similar to MHX getting an XX version.  Now that's been ported to the switch in a third version.  I imagine next year they'll port this to the switch. 

It's easy money and from a business stand point it makes sense. 

The Switch is still too big and has too terrible of a battery life to be a truly portable system, and as you said, the price is a big challenge. The dock and HD rumble are two of the cheapest parts of the Switch, so that wouldn't make a big difference in price.  If Nintendo a made new portable console, they can ditch the joycons, make the unit smaller, increase the battery life,  lower their production costs, and thus lower the price.  All they need to do is keep their core portable franchises as portable exclusives and tens of millions of people will buy it. If they make it incompatible with Switch cartridges, they can sell millions more copies of games as their fans would undoubtedly double dip (as people are claiming this is Nintendo's reason for not annoucing a Switch version of Pokemon Sun/Moon at this time). Nintendo has a habit of encouraging their fans to double dip, and their fans have a habit of obliging. That's a big cash cow that I don't think Nintendo is willing to abandon.

Look, I'm not saying Nintendo should do this. I think Nintendo should make a more portable Switch and call it a day. However, this is Nintendo we're talking about. Nintendo isn't known for doing the obvious, and you cannot rule out any possibilities. It would be very Nintendo for Nintendo to launch a 3DS successor that is incompatible with the Switch, and it shouldn't come as a surprise to you if they do.

And they're going to need Pokemon for 2018 since they've already exhausted most of their universal console sellers this year with 3D Zelda, 3D Mario, Splatoon, Mario Kart and probably Smash (if it gets the 'Deluxe' treatment).  A lot of us are xpecting Animal Crossing next year but Nintendo really needs Pokemon to carry the holidays in 2018.

Game Freak follows it's own rules, for better or worse. Whether you like it or not, it's what's got the franchise's value into the billions and TPCI just had probably it's highest retail sales ever last year with 3.3 billion retail sales and has made so much profit it makes almost every gaming company cry.

Gamefreak does this every gen? Go ahead. Remind me when they ported Pokemon Stadium series to the  Gameboy Color? Or when they ported Pokemon Colosseum to the DS? How about when they ported Pokemon Battle to the 3DS?

What's that? Never happened? In fact it appears that the mainline Pokemon games have appeared exclusively on Nintendo's mainline portable consoles, and the Pokemon Spin-offs like Stadium, Snap, Pokken Tournament etc. only appear on home consoles. This trend continues with the latest announcement.

It's as if Gamefreak, like Nintendo, is treating the Switch like a home console first and foremost. Imagine that.

Man, this is gonna be so embarrasing for you when they announce Pokemon Stars or something similar next year. But I can't wait.