"Major Nelson" emerges as face of Xbox

By Scott Hillis

REDMOND, Washington (Reuters) - Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and sporting unkempt graying hair, Larry Hryb looks like just another guy in Microsoft's corporate headquarters.

But Xbox 360 players know Hryb by his alter ego, "Major Nelson", the endlessly energetic and unusually frank voice of the Xbox Live online service that serves as a sort of social networking community for hard-core video game players.

Hryb's business card describes him, rather blandly, as "director of programming" for Xbox Live. In fact, he runs a mini-empire of Xbox-related media: blogs, podcasts, text messaging and social networking sites that potentially reach some 8 million users in what could be called Xbox Nation.

Hryb is their Walter Cronkite -- someone who gamers can turn to for the straight story on all things Xbox.

"His blog gets hit up pretty substantially. He's kind of delivering the information that gamers are usually left in the dark about, so users really enjoy that," said Erik Brudvig, Xbox editor of gaming Web site IGN.com.

A long-time gamer and former programmer with radio broadcaster Clear Channel Communications, Hryb's media output combines elements of TV news reports, video game fan sites, corporate press releases and customer support.

He estimates he gets 500 e-mails every day, and last year he posted 1,550 times on Web messaging service Twitter to distribute news and information as fast as it comes in. But that does not mean he is short on facts or data. His year-end podcast, for instance, ran three hours.

"The news cycle is not monthly, it's not weekly, it's daily and frankly it's hourly sometimes. Blogging came from setting straight some misinformation that was out there," Hryb said.