Britain gets new on-demand gaming service

broadband services to deliver cheap, but technically advanced, entertainment, says The Telegraph.

It is called OnLive, and like many of Google's services, such as Gmail, it is a cloud service. This means most of the hard work of actually running software is done by racks of servers in large data centres.

Users connect their PCs, Macs, or special OnLive 'MicroConsoles' to the service, and choose from the library of titles. The games are entirely on-demand, with no install or download times.

According to Cable, OnLive subscribers have been urged to keep a close eye on their data usage while streaming video games from the service.

Playing Just Cause 2 through OnLive for around five minutes used around 200MB of data, meaning gamers can expect to get through around 20GB in as little as six hours.

Some Internet service providers (ISPs) offer truly unlimited broadband packages with no usage restrictions, others have monthly limits in place that could easily be exceeded by streaming games from OnLive.