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Xbox’s Major Nelson doesn’t use consoles in hotels anymore — he’s too busy critiquing rooms

Frequent games industry flyers are quite used to taking a console (or two) with them on the road, but not Microsoft’s Larry ‘Major Nelson’ Hryb.

“I used to travel with consoles all the time,” Hryb told Stevivor at PAX AUS. “What I found out is that I don’t need to. We’ve got a bunch at the booth here if I want to go play.”

Instead, Hryb is all business, ensuring he’s connected and able to get any job done from his office hotel room.

“I do have a travel router,” he continued. “I have a D-Link. It’s a DL510 which is the only five gigahertz travel router. I use that, because mostly when I go to the hotel. Most of the 2.4 is saturated. Two things I always ask for is I want a room that’s far away from the elevator, for obvious reasons. I want to have a room that has wired internet. Once I set up my own hotspot, I don’t have to deal with any 2.4 gigahertz stuff.”

Continuous visits to hotels around the world have also turned Hryb into an amateur hotel critic.

“One of the weirdest things I do — and this actually, I’ve never talked about this before — [is] use OneNote to keep a bunch of notes,” Hryb explained.

“Whenever I travel, I keep very meticulous notes on the hotel I’m in, the room I’m in, and then specific data points about the room and the floor. In other words, am I facing the bay, am I facing a highway, is it up high, am I near the elevator, hopefully not. One of the key elements in my notes when I review the rooms is water pressure.”

You can listen to our full chat with Hryb here.


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Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.