Either way...
It is still a ridiculously long time span.
Longer development times are here but some are around 2-3 years not a crazy +5 years.

Not according to wikipedia

Final Fantasy Versus XIII began development as early as 2003, two or three years prior to E3 2006 in conjunction with Final Fantasy XIII, after the PlayStation 3 Final Fantasy VII Technical Demo was completed.^[13] Led by Tetsuya Nomura, the game was developed by the team responsible for the Kingdom Hearts games as well as Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. As with Final Fantasy XIII, development initiated on the PlayStation 2 but was later shifted to the PlayStation 3 when the development team determined that the PlayStation 2's hardware would not suffice for the "visual expression" that the team had initially decided upon and that the single DVD format did not have the adequate storage requirements. As such, most of the development was restarted on the PlayStation 3.^[14]

It could be wrong though.

Well, if S-E didn't put so much effort into the graphics, development times for FF games would be 2-4 years instead of 4-6+ years

who cares how long it takes as long as they make it a pretty damn good game with 50+ hours (just going straight through the game) im happy

the only ones that came after nearly a year was 9 and 10 and i believe they had different teams working on them. and 11 is a completely different team than the others.

you got to count on the new technology, this is their first attempt on this gen. they want to make it as good as possible...and frankly i dont blame them. its probably coming out in 09 but i wouldnt care if they waited til 2011 as long as its kickass

If SE knew what they were doing it would probaly help.
Graphics shouldn't take to long to pull of a good job, yet again, only if you know what you are doing.
Looks around, sees games with well done graphics and everything else with much smaller development times.

The expensive and time comsuming cgi would nt help.

^ Doesn't MGS4 have alot of that, along with is being real time as well?

Keeping that in mind the series is one without frequent installments and the game was well done and released after a 4 year development time I believe.
Good chance it was less than that, while FF is a series that has frequent releases and is still not done 13.

I remember hearing somewhere that FF13 was effectively done, but squenix didn't want to release it is because if they released it right now everyone with a PS3 would have to buy two copies for it to be profitable (Exaggeration). Now, I can't source that claim, but it makes sense, and shows the real reason that they are bringing the game to the 360 in english-speaking regions.

In all reality, it's not taking longer for Square-Enix to release FF games, they're just not releasing core games in the series. They're gonna release 3 games for final fantasy 13, new Crystal Chronicles games, not to mention the other Ivalice games and their cavalcade of remakes. Squenix can make more money on these games than they can making big budget main series titles. I mean, Revenant Wings sold over a million copies but probably cost less than a tenth as much to make as a main series game.