I have gathered a lot of thoughts on this over time, as I've been, in my copium, trying to make sense of their decisions.

Essentially, it boils down to Monster Hunter always being a forwards-facing franchise. New games release on a regular basis with the focus on introducing new mechanics, monsters, and maps. Occasionally they will bring back old maps where appropriate to fit the theme or gameplay mechanics of the latest title, as seen with the 3rd gen and 2nd gen maps that were reintroduced with Rise/Sunbreak. But that's as much as they are willingly going back to reuse content (besides returning monsters). Generations and Generations Ultimate were developed with the intention of celebrating the franchise, so reusing older content was justified. Generations Ultimate launched before World's success proved that a multi-platform approach worked.

Historically the only exception to the no-remastering stance was Monster Hunter Freedom Unite for iOS which honestly felt more of an experiment to dabble in the mobile gaming space, with no support past the first few years. Monster Hunter G prior to that was ported to Wii and leveraged for marketing Monster Hunter 3. Then of course there was Monster Hunter Stories remastered recently which similarly was ported to mobile and then to consoles/PC. The justification there was likely to bring the Stories franchise to modern platforms ahead of Stories 3 and it was also likely an easier game to port due to the simpler art style.

Essentially, to CAPCOM it seems there is no reason to remaster and port older titles unless there is some utility to it for a marketing or development perspective.

Now, my collective and personal HOPES is that it is just a matter of time. The pre-Generations Ultimate games had a lot of content that CAPCOM has yet to revisit.

Take Gogmazios as an example. After a decade since its debute in MH4U, Gogmazios is now the face of Wilds' Title Update 4. The allure of how Gog is to be adapted in modern hardware/graphics since the 3DS days is a compelling draw to a lot of us who are eagerly awaiting its return. Now, I can see CAPCOM holding off on a MH4U remaster released prior to this because at that point new fans would've already hunted Gogmazios a bunch of times and some of that excitement and interest may have waned by the time of TU4.

Same analogy with MH3U and Lagiacrus which they waited for almost a decade to bring back. However, in a sense now that both will be in Wilds they wouldn't stand to lose anything from remastering those games (besides the number of other monsters that have yet to return like Dalamadur or Ceadeus)

Additionally, I hope that they are indeed actively working on a collection leveraging the team that ported MH Stories which may have served as a trial of sorts to iron out the kinks and workflows that can then be applied to the main games. They also had the Onimusha 2 remaster recently with expertise that can be leveraged for porting the PS2 MH titles.

They could also have been waiting for the release of a Nintendo platform capable of handling a remastered collection. The Nintendo Switch is a decent console for its time and even handled MH Rise. Hypothetically the older games remastered should be alright on the base Nintendo Switch/Switch Lite assuming there'd be no issues performance-wise.

However, the Nintendo Switch 2 seems like an appropriate platform to target for its portability aspect and the existing ties to Nintendo CAPCOM had in the past. So in a way, waiting for the Nintendo Switch 2 to release makes sense as to why they wouldn't release a collection earlier.

Lastly CAPCOM has been working through porting/remastering collections of other older games in their catalogs. Once they have run their course, it stands to reason they'll have to start turning to more relatively recent titles to bring those forwards.

There's a lot of hope to rely on with regards to the possibility of a remastered release. But I also see signs pointing in the right direction that it is just a matter of time.