Despite having a relatively action-packed full-time job, the director of programming for Xbox Live Larry Hryb still manages to live a bit of a second life.
By day he's a mild-mannered director guy and by night, afternoon, lunch break and most weekends he's Major Nelson.
Since it's inception about two years ago the blog has become the place to go to get the dirt on the Xbox 360 and Live. And the whole thing is really written by Hryb, not some behind the scenes lacky.
Hryb said he launched the site as a way to communicate directly with Xbox Live gamers.
In the two years since launching the site, Hryb s daily emails have grown to 200 to 300 a day, each of which he says he still reads.
"I think it s pretty critical for an unfiltered view of what our audience is saying," he said.
And many of the top people behind Xbox feel the same way, Hryb said.
"I was talking to Robbie Bach the other day and he started asking what people were saying on the blog," he said. "I get asked that at least once a day up and down the organization."
With the success of his blog has come a little bit of fame for the director of Live both inside and outside of Microsoft.
"It is a little strange to me," he said. "But my goal is still to keep working with our team and shipping a kick ass product."
But that internal fame has given him the power to quash negative 360 rumors quickly and effectively.
When a recent story cropped up that the Xbox 360 faceplates given away at E3 didn t fit the final retail 360, Hryb marched down to the designer of the 360 and snapped a shot of the designer's console with the faceplate on it.
"I don t have the time to do that all of the time, he said. My job description doesn t say blogger, I do these things in my spare time."
But even as the 360 prepares to launch, Hryb is already thinking of ways to incorporate his blog into the next-gen console experience.
"One idea is taking my weekly podcast and maybe making it available in the marketplace (on Xbox 360 Live) for free," he said. "I have a bunch of other ideas like that for the next six, 12, 18 months."
"My job doesn t end on Nov. 22, it just begins. That s when people get their console home and plug it in."
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