Its been 3 and a half years and NOW there understanding the Cell?!

[Reasonable]

Depends on where the developers starts. If, for example, you were centric to PC then it's a real slog I'd say, which is why I think Valve have been reluctant to touch PS3 and Epic's Unreal engine initially struggled on PS3 more than 360.

If you're coming from PS2 it's still a big slog, too. On Uncharted (number 1) there's some good ND 'making of' stuff where they explain all the stuff they had to learn just in the jump in graphical techniques never mind then learning the cell.

So, while it seems long, it's not really. As some devs would have been learning the spending maybe 18 months to 2 years getting their first title out (if not longer).