OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman has announced that the company’s cloud gaming service has entered open beta.

In development for seven years, OnLive’s technology bypasses physical media by streaming gameplay data to Windows or Apple platforms, as well as televisions. Games are not actually installed on a computer – instead, game data is relayed back and forth between computers and powerful servers. For TV-compatibility, a small "MicroConsole" is required.

According to Perlman, the beta rollout will provide a number of challenges ahead of the service’s full launch, which is expected this winter.

“One of the key challenges that OnLive technology addresses is providing a high-quality, fast-response gaming experience over a wide range of situations: different speeds/locations/types of broadband services, a variety of different PC and Mac configurations, several kinds of input and display devices, etc,” he said.

“So, a major focus of OnLive Beta is to test as many of these different situations as we can… As testers interact with the service and play games, OnLive will be constantly logging technical data, and then afterward, we’ll ask testers to give us feedback about their personal experiences with OnLive… Another important goal of the Beta is to shake out bugs so we can fix them.

“Beta is an awesome milestone for OnLive, capping many years of work. We’re really looking forward to hearing what you think.”

Those interested in taking part in the beta can still apply to do so.