Gaikai now live in across 12 countries, ME2 playable

Veteran designer Dave Perry has announced streaming games service Gaikai is live, with trials of Mass Effect 2, The Sims 3, Spore and more available to those with beta access and robust Internet connections.

"We have it live and working in 12 countries across 24 data centers," Perry said in a post on his blog, and showed a screenshot of Mass Effect 2 running inside Facebook, which will be demoed at GDC this week.

Perry said the service is currently focussing on its advertising arm, offering web hosts revenue in exchange for hosting playable demos of games, but is also working on introducing more data centres to cut latency.

"Our goal is to end up with data centers in every major city in the world peered directly to the key internet service providers in that area," he wrote.

You can check out Mass Effect 2 directly from Gaikai's website if you wait for a connection test to complete. Other available demos include The Sims 3, Spore, and Second Life, which Dead Space 2 is accessible after completing a survey.

Thanks, Blue.