I'm not judging you nor trying to throw off your point, therefore it's not ad hominem. I am inquiring as to cultural televised programing. I don't know whether you're in another country and got the shows or not and how it affected your region. In America Saturday Morning Cartoons boosted toy and videogame sales. Saturday morning cartoons thrived for two decades and was over by 2000 which makes about twelve years now.

for anyone saying that Sony doesn't have any unique and fresh IP's i'll say what about LittleBigPlanet,Heavy Rain and inFAMOUS?!

but yeah Sony really need to push their games harder and support them more and advertise the hell out of them to get a more proper sales from them.

How exactly? Especially if they want to endear the Japanese to western made titles?

It's all a matter of taste in the end, but in terms of mass appeal, GoW is in line with the likes of 300, which did well, but is not what "Everyone" will want to play, grossing revenue in proportion to Avatar, which actually LBP and Uncharted are more able to pull off.

I'm not sure how many teenagers play Mario to be totally honest, but anyhow I speak from my development as a teen (and my friends) so it's all personal bias. I don't have numbers to back my claim but I don't think you do either. So we're at a loss.

Regardless, the social phenomenon he was describing is one I've seen in action, very strongly as I grew up. Mario was not cool, playstation was.

Yes, one can even go back to the Kinect for proof a to Sony's innovation towards the casual audience being swept under the rug and Microsoft a generation later gathering the glory. Everything the Kinect did the Eyetoy did first, but Microsofts marketing forced Kinect commercialization into every home and solidified them as innovators when they have nothing to do with the innovation of such tech, just buying the product and making sure it was properly prepped for launch. It was on Jay Leno, the news, good morning America, your mom middle of the day programming. Sony has never marketed for anything like that. 

I also love how in my thread everyone was like "Uncharted doesn't have the potential to sell more than it did", and in this thread nobody even mentions that.

Makes one wonder...

You seem to forget that Sony is the most multi-faceted company in the gaming industry. They own Sony pictures could make movies and shows with a hollywood budget about their games and turn a profit. Marketing movies is one thing Sony  does correctly.....personally I can't wait for the Amazing Spiderman, can't you? I hated  the old movies, but it looks like Sony is getting it right here. Sony could use their movie houses to endear people to their more mature characters if done right.

I agree that commercializing your brand characters/mascots can help but only if done right. I think a couple people have listed examples of commercialization through cartoons, etc that just did not work. But if pulled off right, yes, you have a point. It works.

Another issue is the fact that Nintendo's main mascot is, has been, and always will be Mario. Same goes for Microsoft, it has, is and probably will always be Master Chief. Sony on the other hand seems to switch it up from one generation to another. The PSOne era had Crash Bandicoot, PS2 had Jak (or Kraots late in the PS2's life), and the PS3 now has Nathan Drake. Because Sony keeps pushing new IPs on its consumer base every year (which is a GREAT thing for its loyal consumers who get to experience new games/stories/etc every generation), it ends up hurting Sony because they do not have this main-stay character that everyone can relate to at a mass level.

Also, another issue why their exclusives don't sell as well as Microsofts (I am comparing these 2 as their customer base is far more similar than Nintendo's) is because Microsoft drops about 3 - 4 exclusives per year, whereas Sony drops anywhere from 6 - 10 exclusives every year stretching their customer's wallets thin. Not everyone can purchase every exclusive so customers have to make the decision as to where their dollars will go. Microsoft customers don't have to do that, they can probably afford all 3 or 4 exclusives, and so their selling numbers are greater than that of Sony's.

I love Sony's strategy only because it suits my taste, I enjoy new experiences, I enjoy adult games, and I don't need a mascot like Mario to keep me coming back. Which is why I love Sony's platform. I find that I have more choices. But at the same time, I wouldn't want it to affect Sony's entertainment division and have them close it down if they don't see it as being profitable sometime in the future. It really is in Sony's hands to get things right. They have Sony pictures to release movies for some of their strongest characters, they just need to know how to have synergy between the different divisions. How they can use the strengths of their different parts to create a collective push forward. Right now, their different divisions do not work well together, and I believe that is a problem they recognize and are trying to fix. Whether they succeed or not is something we will have to wait and see.

There were somewhere in the vicinity of 10 billion PS2 owners...having the breadth of exclusives that Sony offered was necessary when you controlled 90% of the market. They had a large user base with varied tastes to support.

The PS3 does not enjoy the same market dominance and therefore does not have the user base to support the wide variety of games they offer at the levels you suggest. It has less to do with marketing than simple logistics.

That being said, the cream usually rises to the top, ergo the large sales numbers of the Uncharted and God of War series.

That's a sound PoV, but I respectfully disagree that Mario is cool to teenagers. Retro Mario, yes he's always cool, but the Mario of today cannot be considered cool imho.

GoW not appealing to mass is fully relevant to OP though. I understand what you mean, but given the thread, I don't believe in its potential. True, not only is it graphic, but I find it disputably interesting. It has fancy visuals and what have you, an ok story, but it is nothing enchanting imho. Then again all series has its fans, so your PoV is sound, that to its fans it's interesting.

As for CoD, you would have said the same thing about it when it was called CoD 3.

This is a thread about potential after all

But you do raise good points.