Yesterday, Steve Perlman made an announcement that made me a very happy gamer. Perlman is the founder and CEO of OnLive, the cloud computer gaming system Chris and I talked about in an April episode of TechStuff titled “What exactly is cloud gaming?” OnLive is going into a public beta testing phase. Yes! I was worried that the game technology was slipping into oblivion — I hadn’t heard anything about it since before E3.

If you’re not familiar with the concept, here’s a quick rundown. OnLive is a portal service — you can download the software to your PC or Intel-based Mac computer to access a library of popular (and recent) computer games. Later on, you’ll be able to purchase a small console that you can hook up directly to your television and access games. The games themselves are stored on OnLive’s servers. OnLive’s computers do all the work — your computer just gives you a window into the game. That means you don’t need the fastest computer or the most advanced video card to play the latest games — OnLive’s machines take care of the processing for you.

But here’s why I’m excited: I used to be an avid PC gamer. I loved how PCs could support rich games that immersed the player in detailed worlds. To me, PC games provided a much more enjoyable experience than console games, which at the time mostly consisted of various platform games that required the player to press jump at just the right moment.