• BusinessWeek, Wednesday, February 25, 2009 11:15 AM

Video and computer games are almost completely static. When you buy and install game software, you generally have to sit in front of the same screen on which you launched the game until you've finished. You can't pause a game on your PC and then go to a friend's house and pick up where you left off, for example.

However, IAC/InterActiveCorp's InstantAction is out to change that. On Wednesday, the company is slated to announce newly licensed technology that allows any game to run directly in any relatively new PC or Mac's Web browser. That means gaming companies will be able to convert some their 3D titles and serve them up over the Web. This would allow "gaming in the cloud," meaning that a gamer could start playing at home and then go anywhere with a good Internet connection to pick up playing right where he or she left off.

As BusinessWeek points out, there's also the added benefit that it becomes more difficult to pirate a game since the software is sitting on a secure server. In turn, this would open up new markets for game developers wary of selling their games in piracy hotbeds in Asia and South America.

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