if you believe the rumor at crackdown 3's announcement it was announced before they had figured out who would be developing it. that means despite being announced 4 years ago it might only have 3 years of development. that's not quite "hell" yet.
crackdown was never a top tier franchise. i doubt this could be really any worse than the "70" crackdown 2 got.
The game seems to have been in pre-production since 2013. A new crackdown was teased at the initial Xbox One reveal event.
Also 5 years of development isn't bad, but continuously delaying something is. Crackdown 3 was first supposed to release in 2016, then it was announced for 11/7/17, then it was announced for spring 2018, and now it's reportedly 2019. That's almost as bad as VizionEck and yet this is a huge first party game made by people that know what they're doing.
Reportedly MS has decided that they want this game to be a new tentpole like Gears and Halo so most of these delays have been for the single player campaign.