Mario Kart's a pure arcade racer, end of story.  It does place an emphasis on weaponry and combat, but that in itself doesn't make it a "party game", just as it doesn't for Blur, Wipeout, Road Rash or any other combat/weapons based racer.  Just as the emphasis on co-op and utter lack of real horror doesn't make RE5 a "party game".  Anyone trying to redefine Mario Kart as anything but chiefly a racing game at it's core pretty clearly hasn't spent much time with either Mario Kart or racing games in general (or they're just trolling as usual).  The whole point and structure of the game is rooted in racing and those mechanics, and even the combat component is ultimately just a means to support that... you "win" when you "win" the race, quite literally that makes it a racing game.  

Honestly, vehicle based arena games like Twisted Metal or Vigilante 8 are probably more along the lines of "party game" than Mario Kart is.  Unless someone has only ever played the battle mode subgame (which has sucked hard post-MK64 anyway) I can't even fathom how anyone who's ever touched Mario Kart could think it's not about winning the race.  Perhaps those claiming "party game" cut put forward some actual reasoning as to that for a change?

How about....it's a high quality Mickey Mouse game thats on a Nintendo console. I ever get a Wii I'm buying it.

It was also well promoted and well funded, which is something 3rd parties seemingly forget about with their Wii releases all too often.

Epic Mickey really had all the right things going for it (brand, developer, budget, promotion, etc), but I think it needed that to do as well as it has.  I'd say it's also pretty much only the 2nd time in Wii's entire lifecycle that a 3rd party game has hit perfectly on all those significant factors (MH3 was the first, DQX will probably be the last), which is ultimately a shame.

The problem ( not really a problem), there is a better formula to sell more on the Wii without spending so much. 

psrock said:

 The problem ( not really a problem), there is a better formula to sell more on the Wii without spending so much. 

I'd say other formulas are actually riskier though, given their rate of success are invaraibly lower.  Particularly for traditional "gaming" brands/genres, the low-buget, low-promotion, often outsourced, spinoff or experimental new IP route pretty clearly hasn't reaped much reward for most.  The other option seems to be "lowest common denominator" casualware, which is incredibly hit or miss.

For high budget, high talent, high brand "core" games, there's a 100% success track record on Wii.  Too bad it's such a rarity, lots of missed opportunities this generation...

So that formula is fine on PS3 and 360 since there is no easy and simple formula like Wii?  Why can't you have both?

I'd say other formulas are actually riskier though, given their rate of success are invaraibly lower.  Particularly for traditional "gaming" brands/genres, the low-buget, low-promotion, often outsourced, spinoff or experimental new IP route pretty clearly hasn't reaped much reward for most.  The other option seems to be "lowest common denominator" casualware, which is incredibly hit or miss.

For high budget, high talent, high brand "core" games, there's a 100% success track record on Wii.  Too bad it's such a rarity, lots of missed opportunities this generation...

I expect that formla to also work on Kinect as its userbase grows. The thing is you have to spend to be very successful on the HD, but you don't have to in the Wii as much.