Now I know the first thing that comes to mind when you hear "streaming game service" is OnLive, but try to forget about that for just a moment. David Perry (of Earthworm Jim fame) has also got a games-on-demand service in the works, but make no mistake, Gaikai is "not in competition with any other streaming company or technology."

While the service has been shown behind closed doors, today marks Gaikai's first public appearance. As pointed out by gamesindustry.biz, there's a nifty video demonstration up on Perry's Web site showcasing games like World of Warcraft, Spore, and even Mario Kart.

"Our goals are really simple, to remove all the friction between hearing about a game and trying it out, to help reduce the cost of gaming, to grow video game audiences, to raise the revenue that publishers and developers can earn, and (most importantly) to make games accessible everywhere," says Perry, who probably had to take a deep breath after talking for so long.

"If the iPhone App store has taught us anything, when you make it easy to check things out, you get a billion downloads." It's kind of shocking to think this thing actually exists, but then again, it is the year 2009, and it's about damn time we got some cool futuristic technology to play with.