We’re hard-pressed to call a book full of concept art for Alien Breed: Impact created by clearly talented artists “kinda nasty,” but, well, part of it features images of gross bugs and stuff. More to the point: gross alien bug things.

If you’re into this kinda thing, we’ve dropped the whole set of images into the gallery below.

Let’s not spoil anything. Instead, let’s just say that Square Enix’s CGI work for Deus Ex: Human Revolution is really paying off. You should watch the trailer above right now. And then watch it again.

Now that you’ve done that, we’ve got some actual news: It looks like Deus Ex: Human Revolution has been confirmed for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. The game will be released in 2011, and is now available for pre-order from the usual suspects.

When I first unwrapped my special edition of BioShock 2, I didn’t give the posters a second thought, leaving them bundled up in the box, completely forgotten. 2K forum member JRoch put them on his walls instead, and while messing about with an old blacklight, discovered scrawled messages on the posters, just like the ones you find in the game itself.

As proof, another 2K forum-goer posted these images, along with a video that can be found at PhotoBucket.

I tore open my box, unfurled the posters excitedly, and realized I don’t own a blacklight. Why do I not own a blacklight?

Very, very sneaky, 2K. I like it. I also like 2K Elizabeth’s response in the forum thread.

“Well, would you look at that.”

Special edition Propaganda posters [2K Forums - Thanks Cailin!]

For very many years Electronic Arts were the biggest game publisher on earth. They have an income of billions every year and they employ thousands of people all around the globe. EA are very important indeed for the video games industry. But they are no longer undisputed number one. The marriage of Vivendi and Activision, fed by the cash cow that is World of Warcraft, with mega hits like Modern Warfare and Guitar Hero and very ably led by Bob Kotick are now probably established at the top of the heap, especially when it comes to profit. (Amazingly they were bankrupt in the early ’90s.)

So again, very unsurprisingly, Electronic Arts have issued more bad financial results. They lost $82 million in the quarter ended 31 December (the best time of year for video games!). Their stock price took another hit. They can’t blame the industry, big global publishers like the aforementioned Activision, and also Ubisoft have done very well indeed. Even Sega have managed to get themselves back into profit. I have written about EA’s problems on here before. Repeatedly.

So what is going wrong?:

• The market for all entertainment IP (including films, television and books) is polarising into blockbusters and niche. Everything else is a potential loss maker. The most successful publishers are those who have geared themselves to the new reality.
• This generation of HD home consoles have awful business models to develop for. Basically making a came costs far, far too much. Several times the cost of games for the previous generation. The root of this is that HD games need a massive amount of content which is still largely hand crafted. The next generation of platforms will have enough power to run lots and lots of middleware so development costs should drop back to sensible levels. In the meantime we are stuck with the PS3 and 360 and they are causing a lot of problems.
• The Wii has been a black hole for many third party publishers. Their fault. They mostly haven’t made the games that Wii owners want to buy. Just look at the Metacritic for Wii to see this. Electronic Arts on the Wii published NCAA Football 09 All-Play (Metacritic 49), Celebrity Sports Showdown (Metacritic 50), NBA Live 09 All-Play (Metacritic 51), G I Joe: The Rise of Cobra (Metacritic 51) and many other such gems that should never have seen the light of day.
• There is a trend on the more casual platforms for developers to self publish. This removes discipline from the market, especially on price. The job of a publisher is to provide editorial control, finance and marketing. Self publishers tend to use the price mechanism as their main marketing tool. Done competitively this rapidly collapses the viability of a platform. Electronic Arts have not taken the grip that they should have, thus allowing upstarts like PopCap to gain traction. Also they were late on the scene for emerging platforms, such as Facebook.
• Electronic Arts’ marketing still seems to be largely based on that of the 1960s detergent companies with expensive broadcast advertising. Their customers’ lifestyle habits have moved on and EA seemingly haven’t moved with them. Marketing now is far more about one on one, two way communication.
• Electronic Arts is very corporate. This is expensive and not necessarily the best way to run a large organisation, no matter how good the man at the top is. Far better to take a lesson from Alfred Sloan and break it up into semi autonomous profit centres with individual bosses who live and die by the sword and who are far more receptive to their customers.

It is not all doom and gloom. The losses are less than they were. The management are cutting out the non block buster games. EA moved away from licensed products so have built up the beginning of a portfolio of good IP that they actually own. There are huge economic advantages of scale in publishing, which positions EA very nicely indeed. The world’s consumers will spend more on games in the future than they are now. The next generation of home consoles will reward those with enough clout to invest heavily in middleware.  And EA do have some excellent employees.

So where does the future lie? I still think that EA are a prime M&A target. They would make a perfect acquisition for Microsoft to give them ammunition in their console wars against Sony and Nintendo. And they would also be a perfect fit for Apple, if and when Apple launch their own home gaming console. To both of these companies EA would be far more valuable than it is for its current stockholders. And both of them have the cash sitting in the bank to buy EA with ease.

Without specifying how (and explaining it to me would be like reading Siddhartha to a dog, in Klingon), George Hotz says he pulled it off after five weeks of work with “very simple hardware cleverly applied, and some not so simple software.”

I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I’ve also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip.

3 years, 2 months, 11 days … that’s a pretty secure system

Hotz says he’s not revealing his exploit yet. While it “isn’t really patchable … they can make implementations much harder.” Wonder if this portends a fast firmware update to snap it shut. That is, if it really has been hacked. But Hotz’s cred in this realm is pretty solid. Interesting.

On the PlayStation 3 [George Hotz, via Gizmodo]

As you can see, some of the Robot Masters made out better than others during the journey from cartoon art to pixels. Sheep Man, Nitro Man, and Strike Man translated pretty well, but Frost Man, Solar Man, and Blade Man seem to have lost something in translation.

Blade Man just wants hugs.

Chill Man is constantly urging people to relax.

Commando Mando.

Nitro Man needs speed. It’s just how he is.

Pump Man is popular with the ladies. And the men. He’s just popular.

The one and only.

Solar Man is our sunshine. Our only sunshine.

Strike Man didn’t want to come into work today.

Cryogenecist Victor Fries dedicates his life to saving his wife Nora from a rare disease, keeping her body frozen in suspended animation as he conducts experiments to try and cure his love. One day an experiment backfires, turning him into the freakish Mr. Freeze, forever confined to temperatures as frigid as his own heart. Like I said, tragic, and even more so when you read through the comics and realize that his poor ice block of a wife might as well have a giant target painted on her chest once everyone figures out what his deal is.

“Put down the freeze gun sir, we’ve got your wife and a blow-dryer!”
“Noooo!”

Mr Fries does not want a Snuggie for Christmas, incidentally. Such is his tragedy,.

I’m glad the DCU folks have decided to go Patrick Stewart with Fries instead of governor of California-style bad catch-phrase machine. Kill da heroes!