News from OnLive today is indicating that the first cloud computing gaming service has entered an open beta testing phase, at least for the PC. OnLive was originally shown at GDC in 2009 and has been pretty quiet so far.

The OnLive service uses a combination of a cloud computing backend, your PC or Mac, a broadband Internet connection, and what is described as a MicroConsole, which allows the rendering of games on your TV. The concept does present quite a few technical challenges and it is likely that this will the first of several beta tests that will be necessary to get to where they need to be ready to roll the service out.

At least right now while OnLive is accepting beta applications from both PC and Mac users, they seem at the moment to only be focused on the PC platform.