Too little, too late, imo.

Why?

Its the same with every other "news" of that kind. Too vague, nothing tangible.

Oh, well that makes sense then. If it was for this gen, it'd be a waste, imo.

It could well feedback into what was mentioned in the job listing about having the ability to utilise the local talent base for contract work as development scales up , this is no surprise in the age of contracts and subcontracting and some of those people coming out of contract will come from Sony but that was always the case and as I'm sure insiders like CGI know more about these things  than us laymen, such as there are many employees who would have worked on games without ever being anywhere near the studio and people finish up when whatever they where contracted for is fulfilled,be it before completion or on completion, the notion of people getting sacked wholesale  at games end is one built on the days where companies doing that where still  in the middle of transitioning from people working full time as employees of a company year after year regardless of product cycles toward today's more flexible workforce  that is more inline with movie production.

Where was this kind of investment half a decade ago? Did MS really think the 360 CoD playerbase would carry the Xbone this entire gen?

ask Don Mattrick.

And Phil Spencer, in charge of Microsoft Studios for a decade now already... 

And please, no "he was in charge of the studios but not of Xbox entirely, so it's not his fault", because it just shows a huge lack of knowledge about how companies work. If the studios fail, the guy in charge of them is responsible, not (only) the CEO. It's his job to get the fundings necessary for his guys to work correctly. If he was not able or not willing to defend his teams and offer a strategy for his division, it's his fault. 10 years after becoming General Manager of Microsoft Studios, you can't finally do something good and say "It's not my fault, I did nothing for 10 years because Don Mattrick has been doing my job all this time, bad Don Mattrick!". This excuse has been thin for the most part of the last decade, now it's simply ridiculous. Soon we'll learn that Don Mattrick was also secretly in charge of the PS3 launch, the PSP Go and the Dreamcast... 

Because unfortunately game dev companies hire a LOT of contractors towards the end of a project, to help hit the shipping deadline. Once that game ships, those non-permanent staff will be looking for work. 

This has been explained already, the Xbox division was merged with the Windows division and had it's funding cut. Phil had to answer directly to Terry Myerson who gave two shits about gaming and blocked additional funding for MS Studios, so they had to work with what little they had. How is it different today? well Phil got a big promotion only late 2017 and now answers directly to MS CEO Satya Nadella it's gives him more leeway with getting more funding which is something that they are now getting.We will see they payoff in 2020 and beyond.