Gaikai Cloud Gaming Service to Offer Free Access to Games

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Gaikai recently disclosed their business model for streaming games. The short explanation is that users can essentially play their games for free. But is there a catch?

We recently talked about how streaming gaming services like OnLive and Gaikai can let us folks who don’t exactly have the baddest and maddest CPUs play games that require a lot of crunching power. This kind of technology shows a lot of promise, and gives folks who have computers running on Intel Atom or other low-power chips the ability to play great games. Even the Apple iPad is supposed to get access to great titles like Mass Effect 2.

While Onlive will require a subscription (about $10 a month), Gaikai will offer their games for free, but you might not exactly be able to play entire games from start to end.

Game publishers will let you play their games as what is essentially an advertisement. They will first gauge your setup to see if your network bandwidth and latency can handle playing the game smoothly. If it’s up to par with the requirements–about 5Mbps to play at 720p–then they pop up an ad asking if you’d like to try out a game.

Users who accept the invitation and who are eligible get to play the game until the clock runs out–usually at about 90 minutes. If you get hooked, they think you’re likely to buy an actual copy of the game.