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I am interested in learning about the new movement about cloud gaming services such as Gaikai and onLive which offer remote rendering on clouds for games. I want to know which is the most popular option out there to develop a game upon. I want to develop a small game, without paying anything(open source is what i prefer), so which is the best option out there?

Also on a side note, What is the future do you think? WebGL OR Cloud Gaming?

EDIT:

I am kinda looking for a cloud-based gaming API service to power games on the cloud If its available yet... something similar to amazon's cloud service, but for high performance graphics applications. Best if its open source :D

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Your "side note" is 1) a separate question entirely and 2) Pure speculation. – Tetrad♦ Dec 9 '11 at 16:37
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I think that you're confused about what Gaikai and OnLive do, get some basic research done. You may also be confused about what a "cloud" is and what they're appropriate for. Take a look at openstack.org and see what kinds of problems they're addressing with their cloud platform to get an idea on that subject. – Patrick Hughes Dec 9 '11 at 17:29

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Gaikai and onLive are not platforms you can "develop a game upon", they're simply a way to play games that require powerful systems for people who might not have very good computers. For instance, you could play Skyrim at the highest graphics settings even if you had a five year old computer with an onboard graphics card. Anything that counts as a "small game" wouldn't be something that cloud gaming services would be interested in hosting. If you're interested in developing a small game, then the best option depends heavily on factors like "is your game 3d or 2d?" and "do you want to make a mobile game, a web game, or a downloadable game?"

To answer your side note: WebGL and Cloud Gaming have such a different purpose that there's no competition that'll exist between the two.

As for your edit: A cloud based graphics API isn't really needed, since current cloud based services render the game on their servers, and stream the rendered game to you via the internet. Existing graphics APIs can be used without having to learn about a whole new API. There'd be very little to gain from a cloud-based gaming API.

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Today its large scale graphics, but cant tomorrow the same system can be also used for small 2D/3D games too right (if necessary). Also I have edited my question please see. – footy Dec 9 '11 at 16:25
@footy It could be used for small games, but it'd be rather pointless. Most small games (especially the sort made by one person for free), don't have the high system requirements that cloud based gaming is designed as a solution for. I've edited my answer to correspond with your edited question. – thedaian Dec 9 '11 at 17:05

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