Now’s your chance to play a game here that’s actually running over there somewhere. OnLive announced today that it’s opening a public beta of its game streaming service. If you sign up on their website you will be asked for “general information about your ISP, your computer configuration and your location” so OnLive can build “test groups” of users working under varied conditions.

If you are chosen, you’ll get an invitation and a Performance Test. If your settings pass muster, you’ll be part of a Test Group and playing games in no time.

Gaming is a big business in the US and abroad in not only hardware sales, but also the games themselves can be huge moneymakers. Top-flight titles like Halo have outsold blockbuster movies and games continue to make big money even in the current economy.

The cloud-based OnLive gaming service was mentioned here this week and yesterday the guys from Gizmodo went hands on with the PC OnLive system playing Bioshock. Anyone who has seen Bioshock on the PC knows that the game is very graphically demanding.

If OnLive has anything to say about it, this could this be a console killer. Something that puts the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii six feet under. OnLive handles all the heavy graphics rendering on its servers and what you get is lag-free gaming as a video stream. IF it works as advertised.

You would use either your broadband-connected PC or Mac, or you could hook up the set-top box to your home theater, which features Ethernet, HDMI and USB. According to OnLive, the box costs “less than a Wii.” OnLive will be launching later this year.