Why would a kid find imagery of a field more appealling than the equally colorful, but stylistic imagery in the 360 versions?

The 360 ones seem like they're trying to appeal to males of a certain age bracket, the Wii could be trying to appeal to just about anyone.

well just as an example, look at food.
Kids like simple tasting, simple looking food.
As soon as you start dressing food up and introducing complex flavors, they don't like it.

Secondly, even as you said they look more cartoony, so do all the covers now that I look more closely. Look at the handegg players' legs. Look at tiger woods' arms. Hardly any muscle definition. Same goes for the footballers.

But yes, kids like simple things that portray reality as they see it.

Same goes for any art style. Kids tend to like things that look like natural (this does not mean realistic). Adults tend to appreciate all art styles, but you'll be hard pressed to find children you like cubism, modern, and abstract art.

However, if something is "fun" then kids will like it. For example, surrealism, dinosaur shaped nuggets, and stuff like that.

Then again, a lot of kids are scared by surrealism.

Additionally, look at what the 360 sports covers portray.

In order from top,

Grace/control

Intensity

Determination/spirit

It is an adult thing to be moved by emotionally targeted art.

Yeah Wii's boxart has Wii on it while the other don't

interesting thing I just noticed on the tiger woods wii game: "pay & play"???

Also, the soccer one has an actual soccer ball on the cover.

Even X-Men origins wii has a slight difference in its boxart. The background hue is blue instead of red to accomedate its *unofficial* caged edition.

Yeah. D'uh.

Pay & Play means DLC.

Guitar Hero is also Pay & Play.

Neither images are simpler than the other. The Wii versions are clear and show context (imagery of the field), the 360 are simple in a stylistic way.

Something that isn't simple would be something that's complex or busy on box art. Busy is rarely good on box art, so neither are complex. The difference is a context background versus a stylistic background (and the slight difference in the characters is fair enough, they have different graphical styles). A "simpler" boxart would have been having less going on, such as with Mario Kart Wii or Rayman Raving Rabids (which have a single event in the boxart with a simple colored background, white and blue respectively). Even simpler would be the Final Fantasy titles, which often eschew imagery entirely.

Ok fine, wordfilter simple to clear.

Simple is a synonym of clear.

My point stands.

Even better, let's use the synonym "straightforward"; or maybe "plain", or "ordinary".

EDIT: I offer this because I think you are confusing my use of simple to mean "easy" or "one dimensional", when I am trying to say that they are "clear".

This phenomenon with EA and different Wii boxarts seems to be limited to North America. Take for example this JP boxart, featuring Wayne Rooney with the wind whistling through his teeth: