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'While we can't shake the ickiness of this deal, we have to acknowledge that EA landing Duff has opened up games marketing to a new realm of possibilities.'
That's already been done in Japan for years. They also sometimes use heartthrobs. For example there was an ad for FFX showing a boyband singer. The ads for Metal Gear Solid 2 showed Gackt, whose fans are overwhelmingly female. Also I think it's the game Legnd of Legaia that was advertised to both males and females, they put ads in girls' magazines. And there are quite a lot of ADs in general which show non famous females playing games. Even for games hwich would be considered stricly nerdy guy oriented in the US, like the ad for Shadow Hearts (i think) which showed a schoolgirl. Back in the PS1 era I read in the official PlayStation magazine about video games and females in Japan, and they said that there were often games targetted to both genders (that's where I read about Lgeend of Legaia) and that quite a large chunk of gamers were female. There often are guys who are suprised that there are females who play RPG's for ex. in the US, but in Japan nobody is suprised and this is a genre widely played by both genders. (that's why they put androgynous heroes lately, because they look like the hearttrhobs that Japanese girls like) And there's another example South Korea, where 70% of gamers are females and people don't assume like in the West that nearly all female characters are played by males. The marketters of these countries are more adept at drawing females to games. So the real question is why the US marketters haven't thought of this before?

'You know, I remember a time when Metal Gear, Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy would spell automatic success...'
It still does in Japan (for DQ and FF)