I think you're making a major mistake by saying that most, if not all, important video games of the last few years had violence as their main game mechanic and that we should take a look at the movie industry to improve ourselves.
As you stated, Beyond Good And Evil only relies on violence for about 30% of its gameplay. Knights Of The Old Republic relies on it for about 40%, in my opinion. Dialogue, for example, is just as important in KOTOR as combat. Other RPG's can almost be finished without any combat at all. KOTOR was considered by many (including me) to be by far the best video game of 2003.
Now let's take a loot at the blockbuster movies. Here's the top 10 grossing movies of 2003, according to IMDB:
377,019,252 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
339,714,367 Finding Nemo (2003)
305,388,685 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
281,492,479 The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
242,589,580 Bruce Almighty (2003)
214,948,780 X2 (2003)
173,381,405 Elf (2003)
150,350,192 Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
139,259,759 The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
138,614,544 Cheaper by the Dozen (2003)
Of these movies LOTR, Pirates, Matrix, X2 and Terminator are at least as violent as KOTOR. Finding Nemi is actually a children's movie and shouldn't really be compared to normal videogames but to children video games, which are usually non-violent too. The remaining 3 movies are comedies.
I'm saying all this just to point out that most movies are driven for a large part by violence, just like video games! Of course all movies stated above have a story and characters and they play a big role too, but the same goes for most games nowadays. The time that games relied SOLELY on violence has long gone. The sequel to Doom, which is a perfect example of a game that's 100% violence-based, actually has a good story and a lot of depth, simply because people don't buy games anymore without these elements. GTA has a splendid storyline too.
Movies never lost their violent side or weakened it. The only real exception to the rule I can think of are comedies, and I'm sure the next Larry game will come pretty close to what we expect from a comedy game and looks rather non-violent. Every other genre has at least one murder or some other form of violence/abuse in its story to get everything going. Your statement that games should become less violent to become mainstream is simply not true.
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