I don't mind the Heavy Rain characters.

If it sells over 1.5 million units, I'm going to be laughing for hours non-stop.

I don't find it creepy at all. It's just a little odd how it's staring at the camera, but then it's the same for a human. I would say that's beyond the uncanny valley, and realistic enough to be completely normal.

I never understood the Uncanny valley effect, I chalk it up to other phobias like Clowns and heights. As for the lady in the Pic, Only thing I see wrong is that her left eye is out of whack, Developers compensated for this effect by cross eying the characters, take a look at Half-life, you can visibly see Alyx's eye's are a bit cross eyed. As for robots, They don't scare me.....until they develop super human strength and become self aware.

well it comes down to this.

the more realistic they look the more you can notice how their emotions, movement, grabbing and millions of things that humans do just look weird.

the developers need to realize that for every step up in graphics/realistic feature and what not, they need to make 3 steps in realistic movements and making things look natural.

If you were to extend "Uncanny Valley" to also cover immersion factor, would it then make more sense?  Not that it makes you feel scared or disturbed, but rather, the shortcomings become more noticable, and it shatters an immersion factor you are having with a game.

The baby video might freak me out, but the picture of the girl doesn't do anything to me.
It wouldn't affect a video game though.

The PS3 baby ad being creepy could be explained by the uncanny valley though.

On the CG woman: I can understand those who say she looks fine, but I can more or less guarantee that once you try and animate her, give her motion, the creepiness will be felt tenfold (as evidenced in CG movies like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Polar Express). Still shots are one thing, but realistic motion and behaviour add a whole new dimension of difficulty to the uncanny valley.

Interesting and I just thought it was the way they stylized the Heavy Rain woman that made her look so damn creepy to me.

i dont think so. The only reason this game might not sell well is if its not marketed well and it is being released for a niche audience. Not because it looks too good