OnLive for iPad has been a long time coming. Worse, news of it has slowed to a trickle since the release of the dodgy “viewer” app [Free]. Yet on the eve of the biggest game show around, things are changing. Earlier this afternoon, Engadget busted out a preview for a new universal micro controller for the service — a controller that is said to work with all OnLive enabled devices, which of course, also means the iPad.

This is the coolest innovation we’ve seen on the OnLive front since getting our hands on an E3 2009 demo of the actual service on an iPad. That experience, however, was kind of a wash — Eli was using a jacked version of touch software and noted that it didn’t really jive with him, so a controller is definitely a welcome sight. Plus, OnLive’s games weren’t designed with touch in mind, so a controller is a necessary… well, it’s not exactly evil, but a controller certainly go against the grain.

Engadget notes that it was using OnLive and the controller via an HTC Flyer, and for what it’s worth, the pairing worked well with little lag. That’s neat, right? At E3 we hope to get our hands on a build of the iPad iteration of the software with a controller and we’ll be sure to let you know how that goes.

[Via Engadget]