Playing high quality video games...for free. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Wild Tangent, a company that has pioneered ad sponsored casual video games on PCs...has signed up some big names in the game business for what it calls the WildTangent Orb. CEO Alex St. John...

"We're launching what's called the WildTangent Orb, which is the next generation of our console that will carry console games from leading console game publishers and will support game pads. And it will turn any PC into a console-like gaming experience. And it will support the Wild Tangent business models. So we have a dramatic shift in content coming. We're going to have all the traditional, downloadable games that we have and we're moving into carrying console type game content on the PC. So I think you're finally going to see your PC be a real competitor to the console because over the Internet, those games are free to try. The Wild Tangent game console will detect whether the games are going to work on your system before you download them, so there's no consumer disappointment. And of course, there's big advertisers sponsoring a lot of the free play. So a lot of the content that you're used to having to pay for in retail is going to be free online."

THQ is among the first to sign up to work with Wild Tangent...

"They've given us a huge catalog of games that we're in the midst of packaging and bundling with the Orb console. Sierra is giving us their console games, especially their Xbox Live games. So we have Battlestar Gallactica, we have Assault Heros."

You can find more...and hundreds of casual titles at WildGames.com. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fsihkin