Following OnLive's very public failure, game streaming services are very much in the news.

Casual games giant Big Fish Games is looking towards the success of Gaikai - bought by Sony for $380 million - in terms of its own Big Fish Unlimited streaming service, however.

"Our server costs are much lower than other cloud gaming services because more games can run concurrently on lower-end hardware," points out Will O'Brien, Big Fish's VP and GM of cloud gaming.

"We are also able to support customers who have basic home broadband speeds of 1 to 2 Mbps."

Incremental sales

Another massive advantage for the publisher is that unlike OnLive, it's not a pure technology play. Big Fish already has the rights to the hundreds of games that will be offered through the service.

In this way, Unlimited isn't being promoted as a disruptive service, rather as an incremental one to Big Fish's already substantial audience of casual gamers.

Some of them will likely remain happy to download their games as standalone releases from Big Fish's web portal, while some will experiment with the free version of the service.

But with the subscription costing $7.99 per month, it's not a big commitment for those who enjoy the immediate accessibility and features such as cross-platform game syncing.

More to come

Currently only available in the US on PC/Mac browsers and now for Android tablets, Big Fish Unlimited will eventually be made available for smart TVs via Roku, and on iOS devices.

Today, there's "nothing to announce" about when those other platforms, or a global roll-out will happen.

O'Brien is also tight lipped about user numbers so far.

"We already have customers from all 50 states and sign ups from over 100 countries," he says of the service which went live in late July.

He is keen to point to how Unlimited will reinforce Big Fish's position in the casual gaming market, though.

"Big Fish controls a large catalog of content. We are currently testing over 1,000 games for the cloud," he explains.

"It gives us a competitive advantage over other potential entrants and a great value proposition to customers."

You can find the Android app here.