Square Enix has officially announced that the PC version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution will be available through Steam, complete with all of the extras and discounts that are pretty standard on the service nowadays. That includes Steamworks features like auto-updates, achievements and Steam Cloud integration for saves. The Augmented Edition will also be available, with a digital art book, special trailers and downloads.

The standard edition is available for pre-order at $44.99 (10 percent off the usual price) with the Augmented Edition at $53.99 (normally $59.99). That's dandy, but how much do we have to pay to get the game installed on one of those implants in our brains?

You know, we thought we were pretty talented when we built a papercraft Weighted Companion Cube. Sure, we never actually finished it, but that one corner looked great. Imagine our dismay, nay, our horror at glimpsing the homemade Portal turret seen above. Created by one Ryan Palser, the turret is a marvel of ingenuity, standing over three feet tall and observing all through its laser-infused eye. The damned thing even packs a motion sensor and spouts its iconic catchphrases when someone approaches.

In short, Mr. Palser, you have crushed our creative impulses as easily as we crushed our poorly constructed paper Companion Cube. Congratulations. Those whose creative dreams are not easily squelched can view exhaustively detailed build photos on Mr. Palser's flickr page.

The winner of the BioShock Infinite "Name in the Game" contest has been revealed, with the lucky fan earning the honor of having their name featured in the game as one of its fictional businesses. Developer Irrational Games picked Peyton Lane Easter, whose name we freely admit is one of the most elegant we've ever heard.

Irrational's blog revealed that over 100,000 entrants submitted their names, though we think you'll agree that nothing beats "Payton Lane Easter & Sons Premium Automated Stallions." Plus, we couldn't be happier that our fear of a Poop Emporium turned out to be just another case of unnecessarily irrational paranoia.

"Chinatown [Fair] was the last one, it had the best players, and this was like our last spot. So now hearing that this is closing, we gotta find another spot to migrate to," one defeated-sounding patron of Chinatown Fair exclaims in the short clip from Arcade: The Last Night at Chinatown Fair. The documentary intends to capture the iconic New York City arcade's last evening, and the ambitious project is being funded entirely by Kickstarter.

Rumors surrounding Chinatown Fair's closing began in early February of this year. Though a brief glimmer of hope saw the owners renegotiating their lease, the 50+ year-old arcade eventually closed for good later that month.

As of mid-day on Monday, the project has raised over $13K, with a goal of $20K (and another 22 days left). The film's production staff are also offering incentives for donation, with everything from a digital copy of the finished product and a credit in the film for just $10, to a "custom designed Chinatown Fair theme arcade cabinet" for pledges of $5,000 or more (One person already signed up! Madness!). Head past the break and see the full pitch video, as well as the premiere trailer.

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Zen Studios has announced that it's readying a Tegra 2-only version of its PSN title Zen Pinball for compatible Android phones and tablets. Set to arrive "soon," the game will be going up against the just-released Pinball HD port for Google's mobile OS, which also requires Nvidia's dual-core chip to run.

The announcement says that "several" tables will be included in the Zen port, including the one featured in the latest DLC for the console version, "Sorcerer's Lair" (seen in the gallery below). Also to be expected: head-to-head online multiplayer and achievements.

Zen Pinball THD -- as it's called -- will be playable at Google's I/O 2011 conference in San Francisco tomorrow, May 10, and Wednesday.

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In one anecdote, former Capcom exec Keiji Inafune illustrates how he got so high up in the company and the kind of behavior that likely led to his hasty exit. During a presentation at Kyoto's Ritsumeikan University, the Neptunia Mk-II weapon dished on the corporate culture at Capcom, and how he gamed it to get Lost Planet and Dead Rising made.

Before those games, he said, Capcom had a rule requiring 70-80 percent of the games produced at the company to be sequels, and the management rejected pitches for new titles even beyond that proportion. Inafune started up two new projects, Lost Planet and Dead Rising, and just kept them going even after the prototypes were rejected.

Eventually, he exceeded the budget for Lost Planet's prototype by 400%, figuring that Capcom wouldn't cancel it if the game was half done. The strategy worked: both titles made it to retail, and started franchises that have sold over four million units each.

Inafune was already well known for a successful act of guerrilla game-making. After Mega Man, his team was famously only allowed to develop Mega Man 2 if they did so on their own time, without affecting the schedules of other projects.

The pre-E3 lull continues this week, though there's still a little news to be found. Namely, we discuss Assassin's Creed Revelations and the delay of Mass Effect 3. And let's not forget Guardian Heroes and its unfortunately "remastered" screen shots. We also have something of an announcement to make, so be sure to stick around.

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During an investors call today, Activision announced that 1.4 million copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops' "First Strike" map pack were sold "in the first 24 hours" of its February 1 debut on Xbox Live. At $15 a pop, that's $21 million in gross revenue in a single day -- on a single platform!

Notably, Activision Publishing's Eric Hirshberg pointed out that those sales were a "20 percent increase over Modern Warfare 2's 'Stimulus Package DLC'" launch. He added that First Strike, which was also released on PSN and PC in March, "continues to outsell the Stimulus Pack by more than 20 percent."

But hey, let's give our old friend the Stimulus Pack a break -- after all, the poor thing had to suffer the full rage of the internet when it became the very first Call of Duty DLC priced at $15! First Strike had it easy.

Beneath the Southern California headquarters of Activision Blizzard there lies a zeppelin-sized vault, near-bursting with piles of gold and riches -- or at least that's how we imagine it. The company today reported its first quarter 2011 earnings, reaping a record $1.4 billion in sales revenue, an increase of $100 million over the same period last year. Net income came to $503 million, up from $381 million in Q1 2010.

Not surprisingly, the publisher attributed a hefty chunk of those profits to continued sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops -- which it also confirmed is not just the best-selling game ever (in terms of revenue) in the US, but in Europe as well. In addition, the company noted that digital sales were up 30 percent over Q1 2010 and accounted for 30 percent of Activision Blizzard's revenue last quarter.

Finally, although it comes second in the "Activision Blizzard" name, Blizzard was first in profit for the quarter. The unit accounted for a whopping $170 million in income, compared to Activision Publishing's $48 million.

Wrap your mind around that headline: Some time this year, specifically between July and September, someone that doesn't work for Blizzard is going to be putting some heavy time into Diablo 3 ... or at least that's the plan. Here's the full quote from Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime, speaking today during Activision's quarterly earnings call, for fear you won't believe it unless it's straight from the source:

"We began internal company-wide testing last week," Morhaime confirmed. "The game looks great, and we're currently targeting a Q3 launch for external beta testing."

Though Morhaime says the team's working to get the game out before 2012, he stopped short of making any official release date announcement. Surprise.

Even before that new app smell has worn off from Hulu Plus, Microsoft will launch its annual spring update for the Xbox 360 Dashboard. Images sent to Joystiq by a Microsoft tech support employee reveal that the next Dashboard update will begin rolling out on May 19.

According to the documents, the update will be distributed in six separate waves between May 19 and May 30 "to ensure a high quality deployment." Additionally, while not technically part of the automatic update, Avatar Kinect is listed for a May 27 arrival as a separate download.

Aside from offering support for the new Microsoft disc format -- which will "be used in future game titles releasing later in 2011" -- the spring system update will enable PayPal support on the console, extending the payment option "to new international markets." PayPal will be "the only user facing feature" of the update.

Update: Microsoft tells us, "We have nothing to announce."

The microtransaction-based Call of Duty game Activision is making for China, first announced in a February investor conference call (and in the presentation that went along with it) is, at least for now, unlikely to leave China. Though, of course, the door's open.

Answering a question during an investor conference call, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick called the game "specific for the Chinese audiences," and clarified, "The product that we announced today is being developed just for China." Kotick added, "That's not to say it might not have applicability elsewhere, but what we're doing right now is focused on China."

The "applicability" could refer to integrating the free-to-play model with other, Western-focused iterations of Call of Duty (which would make sense given the Beachhead-developed "digital platform" in the works) -- or even an eventual localization of that game.

[Update: A previous iteration of this post, published before Kotick made these comments, presented the free-to-play Call of Duty as a new announcement, when it had actually been first announced in February.]

During GDC this past March, I met with Silicon Knights head honcho Denis Dyack under the condition that he wouldn't be discussing the studio's upcoming action-RPG, X-Men Destiny (pictured above). The game is slated for release this year, yet we know relatively little about it -– and we've seen even less. Save for OXM UK, no outlet has published a preview (nor been offered one, as far as I know).

I asked Dyack about his outspoken views against the preview process. "In my view, the ultimate model requires our industry to not show games until they are ready," he told me, echoing his past sentiments. "I'm not saying get rid of previews, because previews are a good thing," he clarified. "What I am suggesting is that our industry should not do previews until the game's completed."

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On Friday, the first Crysis game and its expansion were discounted on Steam as part of an "EA Week" of sales. That night, on the Steam Users' Forums, purchasers began reporting that they could not activate the games. By the next morning, some 221 replies later, a Valve representative chimed in to say, "We are aware of the problem and are investigating the issue."

While it might have been a long weekend for those left waiting for their activation keys to start working, this morning, Valve software developer Mike Blaszczak started a new thread with some reassuring news. "We've been working with EA to get the Crysis keys enabled over the weekend," he posted. "As EA enables keys, users should see the games activate."

Blaszczak implied that the issue stemmed from EA's side, adding, "EA is aware of the issue and actively working through it, and we're doing what we can to assist."

In a follow-up response he confirmed, "Yes, we know the cause," but avoided an explanation. As of publishing, a few users had replied to say their games were now working, though Blaszczak warned, "No ETA is available for individual users."

[Thanks, Martin]

[Update: Corrected headline typo. (Freudian slip!)]

Don't let the excitement of the upcoming Battlefield 3 beta cause a serious error in judgment. Community site BF3blog points out that the "beta keys" on the site BF3nation are a scam -- also noting that the site's owners were also involved in a previous phishing scheme. EA has allegedly been trying to shut down the site, but has so far been unsuccessful.

When the Battlefield 3 beta is upon us, trust that you'll definitely hear about it from your buddies at Joystiq ... oh yeah, and the rest of the internet. It won't be something that'll fly under the radar. In the meantime, assume anything that involves BF3 beta keys is a scam. We've contacted EA for a direct quote on the subject.

Bitmob reports that Sony's PSN servers were running the most recent version of the Apache server software when they were hit, countering testimony made to the US Congress claiming that the PSN was running "very old versions of Apache software that were unpatched and had no firewall installed." That testimony was admittedly based on second-hand information.

Using Google's webcache, a member of the Beyond3D forums showed that as of March 23, Sony was running version 2.2.17, which was the latest stable version. If you're so inclined, you can double-check the process of B3D's "deathindustrial."

Outdated servers or not, Sony has PSN, SOE and non-PSN related security issues to work out before returning to reality (and compromised trust) at the end of this month.

[Thanks, mmmfishtacos]

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A Capcom-Unity forum user received a surprisingly frank response from senior VP Christian "Sven" Svensson when he asked the executive, "Do you have anything to say about the ordeal going down with hackers messing with [Sony] and stealing information from their servers?" Does he ever!

Svensson, who said he was "frustrated and upset" by last month's breach and subsequent outage, offered a two-fold response, first addressing the question from his consumer perspective. "I also play games online on PS3, which I can't do ... and likely my personal information is also compromised," he lamented. "Secondly I like to buy things in the PlayStation [Store] and that I can't do right now" -- not to mention play Capcom's pair of DRM-protected PSN games offline.

While the gamer in Svensson seems to have a surefire back-up plan (his post signature notes he's currently playing Portal 2 on PC), his corporate officer side has less wiggle room to weather the outage. "On a related note, as an executive responsible for running a business, the resulting outage obviously costing us hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in revenue that were planned for within our budget," he added. "These are funds we rely on to bring new games to market for our fans."

Svensson made no mention of any specific delays, cancellations or business restructuring that might result from the revenue shortfall, nor did he suggest how Capcom might look to recoup the lost revenue. His response also avoided any critique of Sony's handling of the situation, and instead stayed on topic: "CAPCOM- How do you feel about the SONY Hackers?" asks the thread's title.

"In short, the hackers appear to be trying to 'punish' Sony for some perceived injustice, and they've been effective in that I suppose," Svensson concluded. "But they're also punishing millions of other consumers and businesses which makes it impossible to be sympathetic to their 'cause.'"

[Pictured: Capcom PSN Storefront; source: Capcom-Unity]

Nintendo will deliver its E3 presentation on June 7 at 9AM Pacific (12PM Eastern), at LA's Nokia Theatre -- so if you're dying to know which of the many preposterous things we've heard about the Wii successor is the preposterous truth, you'll have to wait until then.

We can also expect to hear more about upcoming games for the Wii, DS, and especially the new 3DS -- like the 3DS Super Mario game, for example, and probably some games we haven't heard of yet. You'll be able to read about it all in real time right here on Joystiq!

There'll probably be streaming video, too, but you should just stick with reading Joystiq. Just because.

Though it's been a while since we've heard anything about Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online, Capcom has apparently been hard at work on the downloadable fighter. During a streamed "Ask Capcom" event, Capcom's Christian Svensson revealed that we'll be "deluged with information in about four weeks," putting the timeline around E3.

Svensson went on to classify 3rd Strike Online as "the highest budget digital title we've done" at Capcom USA, even exceeding the budget of Super Street Fighter II HD Remix, which had completely redrawn graphics by Udon Entertainment. That suggests that Capcom is putting a lot of effort into this game -- and also that Udon worked super, super cheap.

Capcom fighting game guru Seth Killian said that this update was "one of those things you sorta have hopes for and you hope it's gonna turn out a certain way ... and then it did." Sounds like this will be the definitive version of the game about fighting super-powered underwear guys.