I own aprox 20 Wii games and 7 WiiWare titles.

Well it's not as simple as that. As Rol already pointed out, casual games already sell exceptionally well on the Wii. That's because casual gamers have a different standard for covers. They're attracted to colorful non-threatening entertaining activity focused covers.

If you put a bunch of Mii's with guns on this cover, you might have attracted more core gamers, but you probably would have frightened away a lot of casual gamers too. It's a fine line. I only scratched the surface in my original post. Someone with a gun may be the most important thing to find on a game cover for hardcore gamers, but there are other factors to consider. Like is how cool the gun(s) looks, or how badass the people carrying those guns are. Let's look at another Midway game, this one aimed at hardcore gamers.

Well the guns are okay, but Chow Yun-Fat, just doesn't look very bad ass. He's not a marine, a space marine, or a gansta, so that hurts this cover. The Blur makes everything softer and less threatening, and therefore less hardcore. Because of all this, Stranglehold didn't sell very well, even though the cover has a guy with guns on it. Midway made sure to fix this problem with Game Party. They studied Nintendo's Casual Game Covers and copied them exactly, ensuring strong sales in the casual market.

Now, if you're particularly crafty, you can make a cover that might attract people from both crowds, while not alienating them both. For that, let's go back to GTA publisher, Take Two, master of high selling cover art.

Obviously the cover aims at the casual crowd, and succeeds. Numerous colorful non-threatening activities are there, but what else is there? Targets and clown balloon pops? Things you shoot with guns. It's very subtle, and therefore not going to reel in many hardcore gamers, but it did pull in a lot of casuals, and just enough hardcore to put it above every other third-party mini-game collection on the Wii. (Excluding the cluster fuck of licensed mascots cover that is Mario and Sonic Olympics, one of which is 1st party)

EDIT: Upon further analysis, it’s obvious again Nintendo knows this better than anyone. Wii Play covers the ideal casual gamer cover perfectly, yet also alludes to guns, and shooting things with them by showing targets, ducks, and tanks shooting things.

Again, subtle, but less so than Carnival games, and more effective. I misspoke when I said Midway copied Nintendo’s covers perfectly, Game Party does not allude to guns or shooting, and this is why Carnival Games is beating it by a very wide margin.

i only have galaxy left now, i want mario kart

and thats it really, i tried to like paper mario but it was just jibberish

il keep wii sports because it came with it

im not interested in attach rates only games

i have bought sonic mega collection and windwaker, but classic controller dont work with them

i predict wii to have another monster xmas

@Brainbox - Wait... you were serious? lol

I still say if someone makes Mario Paintball (or better yet Super Smash Bros Paintball) it'll sell 10+ million since it'll be a great bridge title for both casual and core

I don't know. Guess I should just keeping analyzing until I find out.

I'm confused. Rol is right again or something?

I own way too many Wii games to be hardcore. I need to belong to a new catagory that's more casual than casual even. I could be a candy ass sally pantser or something. It has to be the opposite of tough because I am helping the attach rate for the Wii way too much and I also am not a virgin.

Wow. Is the general attach rate really that low? I own like 7 or 8 Wii discs, 3 WiiWare games, and 6 VC games. On top of that I must own at least 30 GC games... and in my opinion, the Wii is practically a desert in terms of stuff I want (I don't really like WiiFit, WiiMusic, Carnival Games, WiiPlay, etc., even if casual gamers do -- obviously I qualify as "hardcore").  If you compare my numbers beside those of the average Wii owner (the "casual"), my attach rate is 3-4x as high.  If that was typical, the smaller hardcore crowd carries so much weight as to be a force to be seriously reckoned with, relative to the casual gamer, despite the numbers differences.

I'm really surprised that the general Wii owner would only spend $150-200 (3-4) on games (assuming they even bought new ones), when they bought the console for $250.

Cleary someone who owns as many Wii games as you goes beyond and casual and into non-gamer status. And Non-gamers buy more Wii Games than anyone. (But they're not "real" games, so you're not hardcore for playing them.)

What do you mean that they aren't real games?  You just don't know art.