I disagree. Crash, Spyro and the like would have all been good icons for Sony. Unfortunately they arent. Cloud kinda is, but FF jumping ship as pretty much made people consider it as yesterdays exclusive character.

Drake will never be iconic unless hes changed drastically from how he looks now.

Win!

They would say "That's HALO!"

So you agree that he was insanely recognizable. Good, That's progress.

As for why he's not recognizable today, that's because

!.) He only starred in one game, 
2.) That game released eleven years ago, and
3.) The game he was featured on has had three different sequels all with different characters. 

Although essentially a super soldier in armour. You never see his face. This one simple decision created so much buzz around Masterchief seperate from the game. People would endlessly discuss about the Chief and still do. Sometimes not even mentioning the games. Ive never heard a Drake conversation outside of discussing the games hes in. Even in my PS3 circle of friends.

Uncharted is the icon. Drake isnt. With Halo and Masterchief both fit the bill. I guess also alot has to do with the world they are in to. Unchharted is essentially Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones. With stories just like them. The world isnt flesed out beyond the area your playing in at the time.

With Mario games or certainly Masterchief, there worlds stretch and exist far outside of the levels your playing in.

Marcus Fenix look is too exaggerated for its own good.
OTOH Master Chief is quite iconic (but quite far behind the most iconic ones) thanks to the huge success of Halo and despite a big hurdle, that they designed him as a faceless hero to ease player's identification. You can't have both things, actually, and in an FPS identification is more important than an iconic character, while in third person games, be them 2D, isometric 3D or perspective 3D, an iconic character is a lot more important.

Generic?

Doen´t generic mean it is something typical, something that has been done over and over again? Well if that is the case then how is Kratos generic?

And an iconic character should be somebody who is bigger then the game he is in. Like Super Mario, Sub-Zero & Scorpion, Kirby etc. Most of the named characters have iconic games but are not iconic characters per se. For example you could make Uncharted without Nathan Drake. I know many people would be pissed off but it would be basically the same game just with a black guy instead for example. But the whole God of War franchise would be upside down if you throw Kratos out of God of War.

Wasn´t he black?

Pierce Brosnan

It will always be mario.


Other iconic video game faces include Pikachu, Ryu, and Pac-Man. At least those are the faces that associate with the word video games.