Yeah, gen 8 was the longest I held off on buying any of the consoles for a LONG time.
I got burnt by the 3DS at launch, and even though I actually enjoyed the cool 3D gimmick, it was overpriced and other than PilotWings there was nothing I wanted to play until OoT3D came out.
I remember when the Wii U was coming out and seeing a display for it at Best Buy and thinking "oh yeah, a new Nintendo console is launching... huh." Had absolutely 0 hype about the system itself or any games for it for month after month. I doubt I would have even gotten one if my girlfriend hadn't gotten it for me as a surprise birthday gift.
XB1 I mainly bought just as an entertainment device that had voice support with the Kinect (which was actually BETTER at launch, apps like Netflix and Hulu eventually took out a lot of the voice functionality, like navigating and selecting shows just with voice). The only true exclusives I care about are Sunset Overdrive (great game) and the Rare Replay Collection. Everything else are either franchises I'm tired of (Halo, Forza), or I can play better versions of on PC. BC is one of the only other reasons I keep mine, but I still have a 360, so even that's not a big reason.
PS4 I got after the Slim came out (and it was on sale during black friday). It has a decent enough library now that I don't regret owning it, but like the Wii U it took a while for enough games to come out that I cared about.