Gaikai.com quietly launched

David Perry's cloud-based gaming service Gaikai.com launched quietly on Sunday, and is now officially in open beta.

Perry sent out a blast of 1000 invites on Sunday, and another 10,000 after that. Players are hitting 15 of Gaikai.com's 24 data centres, Perry wrote on his blog.

Perry will continue to send out invite blasts in waves of 10,000 until all reported issues are fixed.

Gaikai.com launched with sci-fi role-player Mass Effect 2. "Bioware simply rocks," Perry said. "They've been very supportive as has Electronic Arts. The good news for them is we are getting a surprising amount of people clicking 'BUY' without even making them a special offer."

60 deals are in the works. Invites for a "special build" of Second Life have also been sent out.

To get invited, you have to register on Gaikai.com. The site checks your internet connection to see if it's fast enough – or you're close enough to a server – to stream videogames.

"Everyone will be getting invited in batches and if you are too far from our servers, don't worry you've actually helped as you've shown us where we need to install more data centres," Perry offered.

"We're effectively reverse-engineering the internet, letting the traffic show us where the best data centre position would give access to the most people."

Last year Digital Foundry took a close look at Gaikai.com, and Tom chatted with Perry in an interview.