Microsoft is closing down Xbox Entertainment Studios, but that won't affect Halo TV or Halo: Nightfall.

Loading

Loading

Re/Code broke the story about Xbox Entertainment Studios shuttering, which Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has since confirmed. "I hope you have had a chance to read today’s mails from Satya [Nadella, CEO of Microsoft]. I wanted to take a moment to share a few thoughts on what this means for our team and some of the changes we are making as a result."... As part of the planned reduction to our overall workforce announced today and in light of our organization’s mission, we plan to streamline a handful of portfolio and engineering development efforts across Xbox. One such plan is that, in the coming months, we expect to close Xbox Entertainment Studios."However, the closure of Xbox TV won't affect a few of the studio's upcoming projects, most notably Halo TV or Halo: Nightfall. In addition, the upcoming documentary series, Signal to Noise, which has a first episode about Atari, is still coming.And while Xbox Entertainment Studios is closing, a few of the key members from the company will stay on to oversee these productions, including Nancy Tellem, who was in charge of the TV endeavor. She was hoping to bring a Game of Thrones-like production to Xbox. "Nancy Tellem, Jordan Levin and some of the [Xbox Entertainment Studios] team will stay on and remain committed to original programming already in production ...," a Microsoft spokesperson told IGN.Spencer also noted that nothing has changed in regard to Microsoft's commitment to entertainment apps on Xbox. "... Our app partnerships with world-class content providers bringing entertainment, sports, and TV content to Xbox customers around the world are not impacted by this organizational change in any way and remain an important component of our Xbox strategy," he said.The Halo TV series is expected to premiere late next year, while Halo: Nightfall will be packaged with Halo: The Master Chief Collection later this year. Stay tuned to IGN for everything Xbox-related.

Evan Campbell is a freelance news writer who streams games on his Twitch channel , talks about Nintendo weekly on the NF Show , and chats about movies and TV series on Twitter