Steve Perlman shows off OnLive’s disruptive MicroConsole (video)

Steve Perlman, chief executive of instant-play game company OnLive, is also chief pitch man for the company’s games-on-demand service. Today, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is announcing it is taking pre-orders for its $99 MicroConsole and wireless controller. With it, you can play high-end games on low-end hardware.

OnLive has been working on its server-based technology for more than eight years and has a team of 200 people. It has raised a considerable amount of money for the task from investors such as Warner Bros. and British Telecommunications. Its latest round of funding gave OnLive a valuation of $1.1 billion.

In June, the company launched its OnLive service on the PC. The MicroConsole is an adapter that, with a wireless controller, allows a player to play OnLive’s 35 approved games on a flat-panel TV. That will directly challenge the more expensive game consoles from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. More games are coming, but Perlman is able to show in this video that the system boots up and gets you into a game in around 15 seconds. The games can be played in 1080p resolution at 60 frames per second, as long as you have a broadband connection speed of 5 megabits a second for a 40-inch TV.

Our video chat with Perlman is below.