Sure there is Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, Cooking Mama and several other games that appeal to girls, but aside from niche games how should developers target other genres for female audiences? I have no problem playing games targeting at boys so I don't mind but getting girl gamers might be the next great frontier of expanding gaming. Should games have more good looking guys in them, I know the emo look is working wonders for Final Fantasy's appeal to 13 year old girls? Should there be dating sims made for girls? Should girls even be targeted specifically in the first place or are things fine the way they are? How do we get more girl gamers?

Girls are generally a lot more sociable and interested in a far wider range of activities than boys. My daughters have so many interests in which to occupy themselves but if my sons don't have a PC or console they are lost souls!

I think they need to import more dating sims from japan.

Barbie's Horse Adventures.

How about DDR? My wife has been like a pig in sh|t since I bought the game.

How about Halo 3? That will be a girls game! GTA are girl games. MGS are girl games. Mortal Kombat are girl games! Isn't that right?

Only boys will play Nintendogs, or Animal Crossing. Those games are far too violent for girls.

Girls do play VG, but many of them play specific kinds, and many of these kinds just are under the radar of NPD and such. If you go on adventure games forums, you'll see many girls/women. Same goes with puzzle games (Zuma, Bejewelled, etc.) and stuff usualy classified under the "casual gaming" market. What's suprise me the most is that japaneese publishers are not pushing this market even more than they are. I mean, look at mangas. Shojo are tailored for women and reaching their target. My wife and many of her friends/co-workers are just crazy about Nana and such. Here is the secret : most of Shojo are written by women. But right now, there are very few women in VG. And many get there having to format themselves to a masculin market. So until that change, I think that we won't see Triple A projects dedicated to women (except maybe for Sims-like stuffs).

Girls like romance and social interaction, role playing games that deal with more relatable social or romantic themes would do well.

I play all kind of games, used to play only RPG games on the PS2 from Japan but am fed up to stick with only 1 genre, now on the WII I play all kinds of genre's, WII Sports, Excite Truck, Paper Mario, Swing Golf Panya, Fire Emblem, you name it... but indeed you won't see me playing Resident Evil or shooting games like you see on the PS3 such as Resistance. Not because I'm a woman, but simply because I don't like those kind of games.

And for the record... I can't stand romantic, love adventure games, Cooking Mama or TheSims!!

I think The Sims is a big game that caters to females. I have a friend who names her characters after real life people, then emails everyone to tell them how they are doing lol