I only doubted that people would do this. You're an exception, a very special exception... that screwed up my view on this. ;-P

Usually they've been hits more than misses. I've had quite the good luck.

lol more than one person on this thread said they bought a game just from the box art  

and yes i know, those pictures in the OP are really boring if you ask me

I think yes. The average gamer went into store and might get interestedof a game because of a nice cover. It will surly help a little bit.

Certainly. I bought an Xbox game because it had a cool boxart. Had no internet back then to check if its any good so I bought it.
The game was okay-ish but certainly not worth the full price. I've been searching that game lately on Metacritic and it turned out that it has a ~45 Metascore lol.

For adults who buy games for their children it's also very important as they don't generally drive to a store to buy a specific game. They just look what's there and maybe ask the guy behind the counter.

Yeah, no doubt.

Cover art, the very name of the game, the words and images on its back... all of these are very important to create interest. The same goes for books and music CDs too.

Look at Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate's boxart and tell me that doesnt make it clear to you. :)

With that said, different box arts interest diferent people. but a rich image or a rich logo in a white background do it for me.

Things have changed a lot, now people know about the game their about to purchase thanks to the internet. back than they didn't have any clue what game to buy unless they heard about it in school,work..etc.

Now a box art doesn't matter back than it did matter. but you always have those casual gamers that will buy anything based only on the cover.

haha what was the game?

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox/black-stone-magic-steel