Gaikai live in 12 countries

By Tom Ivan for computerandvideogames.com

Following a beta late last year involving 11,000 users, cloud gaming service Gaikai is now live in 12 countries, with a number of EA games available to play online.

For those not in the know, Gaikai mastermind Dave Perry describes it as "a revolutionary new technology that lets you play any game online in your browser" - check it out running Mario Kart 64 and World of Warcraft here.

Writing on his blog, Perry said open trial versions of Mass Effect 2, Dead Space 2, The Sims 3, Spore and Second Life are playable through various websites - the image on the left shows Mass Effect 2 running inside Facebook.

"Our network is now the fastest interactive proximity network in the world," Perry claimed. "We have it live and working in 12 countries across 24 data centres.

"At the Game Developers Conference in our meetings we will show some really high-end, high-performance games running at 60hz with no work needing to be done by the publishers / developers.

"Our main focus however is our advertising strategy, where we can put any game anywhere on the web. Our objective has been to empower publishers and retailers to give gamers what they keep asking for... 'Let me try the game'.

"... Our thinking is somewhat like YouTube, as instead of just building a portal to go and watch videos, they decided to focus on putting videos everywhere on the web. We are doing the same with games, so when you read a review on a game, you can try playing it right there on the same page as the review.

"Nobody else in the world has achieved this kind of streaming performance directly into browsers, it's technically the most advanced interactive advertising unit in existence, and I'm incredibly proud of my team's accomplishments."