EDIT: I am talking purely about software titles exclusive to the generation, not about hardware. I am purposefully counting out remakes and enchanced ports. 

This generation has been particularly competitive between Sony and Microsoft, with both trying to undercut each other in terms of featurs vs. power and such, and prior to the revealings of the consoles near nothing was concrete in terms of specs. Now, most of the games on the consoles are either ports or first party games, which makes me think- could the reason be because the third party devs were left in the dark in terms of console hardware before release? 

I think that both Sony and Microsoft themselves were uncertain about the final hardware specifications of their consoles until the last few months before release, which would lead to devs not having access to a solid development kit. I'm sure Sony wasn't positive about the unified DDR5 memory until the last year, as just two or three years ago the cost would have been too prohibitive to include 8gb of it. Also, the first generation kinect was released towardds the end of last generation, which could mean that Kinect 2.0 was only recently finished and finalized. Finally, AMD's unified APUs were introduced only in 2011, which means that the decision to use unified chips probably was a recent one, and truly graphically competent GPUs weren't even here until 2012-2013 (and, seeing as that the development cycle for most triple-A games is around 2-3 years, a year or at most two probably wouldn't be enough for developers to transition console development).

This leads me to believe that devs have had much less time to fiddle around with development kits compared to previous generations. Thoughts? 

I have another theory: it happens every time.

thread ends here

This. It's like people forget this is how every generation starts. 

Third party devs helped shape the final product of what the Xbone and PS4 would turn out like. 8GB or ram standard for this gen? Thank people like Cliffy B for stating that it would be needed for the current gen. Every generation starts slow, but this gen will pick up quicker than normal. The amount of current gen titles coming to Xbox One and PS4 is looking good next year. Can't wait until E3 as well.

sure? lets look at the last 2 gens...

6th gen:

sega DC:

a new sonic, 2 great fighting games, some racers and a lovely zombie shooter.

fine start.

Sony ps2:

some racer, some fighting games, some rpg. dynasty warrior 2, timesplitters, UT.

great start

nintendo GC:

wave racer, luigis mansion,supermonkey ball, crazy taxi, tony hawk 3 and a great star wars game and a ok batman game.(and in europe a sonic game)

great start

m$ xbox:

halo, dead or alive 3,  tony hawk2?, oddworld, some racers.

fine start.

all had the normal sportsgames.

a realy nice start.

7th gen:

m$ xbox360:

cod2,gun,quake4, tonyhawk,perfect dark zero,some racer.

fine/great start.

sony ps3:

cod2, resistance,tony hawk, some fighter, some racer.

ok start. we all know, ps3 had no gamez...

nintendo wii:

wii sports,cod3, zelda,a great tony hawk,redsteal, rayman rabbits, some racer.

cant say how the start was, was to busy playing zelda. buti guess a great start

It's partly the developers own fault.
There is a scramble with most developers to rebuild new game engines and assets to take advantage of the new horsepower offered by the Next-gen twins, which takes a ton of time, however a few developers literally didn't have to.
Frostbite, 4A, CryEngine were already "Next gen" with assets to match, on the PC years before the new consoles dropped, which translated well instantly over to the Playstation 4 and Xbox One with Battlefield 4 as a prime example, all that occured was a little downgrade in image quality. (I.E High vs Ultra graphics and only 1080P or lower.)

If developers such as those in charge of Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, Grand Theft Auto etc' had "next gen" assets and engines, then developers wouldnt have been caught off guard as severly, people are still waiting for GTA to arrive on the PC, Xbox One, Playstation 4 due to the lack of next-gen readyness foresight by Rockstar Games.

As for GPU's, the PC has had single GPU's that (Theoretical performance) eclipses the Playstation 4's GPU for roughly 5 years now, 6-7 years for multi-GPU solutions, however it wasn't untill a couple of years ago that such performance levels were affordable for a cheap low-end and low-cost device, not to mention thermal and power constraints had to be factored into it aswell.

So really, it's not that developers were "caught off guard" but instead they simply wanted to maximise profits as much as possible with the current engines and assets as they possibly can, game engines and assets afterall cost money to develop/license which does not come free. (Hence the over-reliant use on Unreal Engine 3, which looked ugly.)

Nope.

In previous gens we have had TONS of third-party titles available in the first few months after launch, most of which were exclusive to that gen. If you did a little research, you would know that. I'll link the list of titles on Wikipedia for some consoles, just sort them by release day and you'll see. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_3_games

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_2_games

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_GameCube_games

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_games

etc.

If you did any research at all before wanting the thread locked, you would see that the Xbox One and PS4 library of games after half a year is pretty paltry compared to previous gens. 

I had my witty response to the OP all ready to type... then I read the very first comment ^ .. damn you lol This generation has actually gotten off to a better start than last IMO. Both are unbearably dry and somewhat slow to get rolling. Which is why I own none of the next gen platforms yet. I'm loving current gen, and have a few more titles to clear from my back log and maybe around holidays of 2014 I will take the dive. Hopefully the library will have grown some by then for all 3. 

The PS4 is the fastest selling console of all time.

The Xbox One is the third fastest selling console of all time

Do you even remember the start of the last generation of consoles?

Also it has been just over five months since the consoles launched and loads of games have been released.