CommunitySpotlight:
Gamertag Radio
Xbox Live Community Radio
If you haven't listened to the weekly Gamertag Radio shows found atgamertagradio.com, you're seriously missing out. You want game reviews? Check. Rumors—both mongering and dispelling? Check. Roundtable discussions with Xbox Live™ members? Check. In-depth, insightful interviews with community leaders? Double check. Here at Xbox®, we think Gamertag Radio is one of the most exciting additions to the Xbox Live community, so we got in touch with co-founders and brothers Danny and Daniel Pena—also known as Godfreeand Nano551, respectively.
Godfree, host of Gamertag Radio.
Godfree, 27, and Nano, 18, live and party in Miami, Florida. Godfree also does promotions for indie record label Luna Empire and works for the Discovery Channel. Nano works retail—which he says sucks—and is a college freshman. Back in the Dreamcast days, Godfree used to host a weekly call-in show in the Phantasy Star Online lobby. With Xbox Live taking over most of his waking hours, he thought he'd try the radio show idea again, and recruited his younger brother to help out.
Each week the guys line up interviews with community leaders such as TeamXbox, Xbox365,PMS Clan, and TXB Colony. They also set up roundtable discussions on various Xbox® topics with Xbox Live members. All of these take place not via conference call, but on the XboxLive service—in the Halo® 2 lobby, to be exact. Godfree feels that the sound quality in the Halo 2 lobby is great, plus it's very secure. They record the conversations on video, and then just use the audio portion by editing with Cool Edit Pro.
Gamertag Radio is co-hosted by Nano551.
The guys record interviews throughout the week, lead the roundtables on Saturdays, and then on Sundays record the rest of the show and mix it together. They also like to keep their intro music fresh, with frequent updates from Godfree's buddies in the hip-hop scene. The most recent intro (launched with Episode 5) was produced by Roblove with DJ cuts by DJ KNS. The previous intro was produced by Bam Beatz at Luna Empire.
They had about 500 listeners for their first episode. Now they're getting nearly 900 downloads per episode. As the word spreads on this unique site, we're sure they'll have more traffic than they know what to do with!
Coming Soon to a Halo 2 Lobby Near You
Next up? Our very own Major Nelson is featured in Episode 7, they'll be doing a special post-MTV roundtable discussion on May 12, and you can expect daily Gamertag Radio broadcasts from E3. Want to take part in the roundtable discussion right after the next-gen console unveiling on MTV? Sign up in the Gamertag Radio forums, hosted by GamerTagPics.com.
