i can has apex?

Let's take a step back from productivity for a moment, and consider that other software will be moving to the Cloud as well. Case in point - rather than spending $500 on that brand new next-generation video game console, or upgrading your PC's graphics card, what if all you needed was a broadband connection?

Onlive, a startup in Palo Alto, CA is trying to do just that. The MIT Technology Review reports:

"Today the company announced a service that lets any computer run the sorts of graphics-intensive video games traditionally reserved for high-end gaming systems. Games can also be played on a TV using a small device offered by the company that connects a television to a broadband Internet connection."

The founder, Steve Perlman, was part of the team that developed Apple's Quicktime compression algorithm, and he's brought his expertise to bear in this venture, to ensure there is no lag between pushing the button and seeing the response on-screen:

"Games need to be very responsive to user so when you push a button, that game better react instantaneously; the big technical problem is when you push a button at home and it's actually running at a computer potentially thousands of miles away, there's going to be a lag," Dolbier says. "Solving that problem has been a major challenge that Rearden has been aggressively tackling for some time."

Has he solved it? He seems to think so - Onlive has had 16 games up and running at its conference trade show booths and is planning to launch in late 2009. For more information, check out their website, see the demos, and sign up for the mailing list.

And yes, as a Cloud app, it will be a subscription model. Whether you consider that a good or a bad thing when it comes to your video games, it certainly beats shelling out hundreds of dollars for the next-generation video game console!