Why? I can play Assassins Creed II on my old MacBook. I can play Arkham Asylum on my Mac mini. I don't have to spend hundreds of dollars building a graphically superior gaming rig in order to play high end games. I can play modern, highly-rated, extremely popular games on the Mac--something that couldn't be done before. OnLive offers console titles that have never (and likely would never) been seen on a Mac. And the best part is that I don't need to tax my hard drive with huge downloads or my processor with rendering the impressive graphics. OnLive does everything on the cloud, something that a few years ago we never would have thought possible. Despite its flaws, OnLive's service is a huge step forward for Mac gaming.

I understand why gamers are squeamish about OnLive's relying on the cloud and removing the comfort of downloading the game. It's a bit, scary, and a huge step. We associate downloading the files with "ownership," but increasingly such ideas of ownership are become outdated (see the music industry's decline for what people think about conventional digital ownership rights).

A whole new slew of games for Mac gamers is a great thing. Game companies aren't developing for the Mac and OnLive helps bridge that divide. If OnLive is successful, the business model for computer gaming completely changes--and that rightly scares the heck out of some people.

The Eddys are designed to reward the best of the year's past. In my opinion, both OnLive and Steam deserve such distinctions. Yes, both stumbled out of the gate, but we've never seen practical gaming services on the Mac and now we have two functional services that are changing how games are played on the Mac. Innovation and impact are two qualities in Eddy award winners, and that's why both Steam and OnLive are deserving.