All of the questions about Gaikai and OnLive have revolved around whether the streaming technology actually works. Can a company actually process your games on a remote server, and then stream them to you in a playable format? For Gaikai's CEO Dave Perry, there's no question: It works. "Yeah. Yeah," he says. "Absolutely. No problem at all."

The question that Gaikai is trying to answer, then, isn't about whether the cloud works, but how. OnLive has launched with a subscription model, but Perry's doing it differently. Rather than build a service for customers, he wants Gaikai to serve as a sort of distributor -- a go-between for game publishers (like EA and Activision), online content creators (like Joystiq), and game players. Gaikai's "secret sauce" isn't in the streaming technology itself, but in the business model that makes it possible and profitable for everyone.

Perry explained his plan to us in detail at the company's headquarters in Southern California last week, and told us why and how Gaikai is different from all of the other streaming services out there.