Third party games have no trouble selling on the 3DS, so that is BS (Monster Hunter, Dragon Quest, Yo-kai Watch, Bravely Default, Kingdom Hearts, Professor Layton, Puzzle & Dragons).

no, it will never be as iconic. its impossible.

PlayStation has surpassed Nintendo, and Mario has surpassed Nintendo.
When people think of "nintendo" the first thing they think is Mario, not Nintendo as a whole, when people think of PlayStation, they think of the consoles themselves, and the entire library.

We are comparing the brands here not the franchises under them.

I guess so. I guess I'm taking brand competition too far.

But it is true that well established franchise release can damage other releases in similar time period - AKA Ubisoft why are you releasing Rayman against Skyrim and Call of Duty.

Ps is by far ahead of ninty. Just go to every store thar sells games an sonys shelves flood the place

Nintendo has multiple franchises that can currently compete with Mario in terms of sales like Animal Crossing, Super Smash Bros. (a celebration of Nintendo as a whole no less) and Pokémon. A new IP like Splatoon can even compete with Super Mario 3D World. Traditional Mario games have even been surpassed by a spin-off game named Mario Kart. Mario isn't the undisputed king anymore at Nintendo. What he does do better than any other video game franchise is making spin-off games that sell.

Playstation is a brand of console hardware, Nintendo is a brand of the company as a whole (consoles + games). You can't talk about the Nintendo brand and not talk about its iconic franchises.

Is that supposed to be a positive ? 

Jay Z vs Elvis

Shrek vs Mickey Mouse

Sony vs Nintendo

As Nintendo, yes. As Mario, no.

That just makes the franchises Iconic, not the brand itself.

Being unable to see Nintendo as a brand beyond its various franchises only further solidifies the fact that the brand itself is less iconic, because the franchises that have, as i said, surpassed Nintendo themselves take center stage in place of Nintendo.

When you say PlayStation the first thing that enters most peoples heads are the consoles themselves, PS1, PS2, PSP, PS3, PS4, Vita, Pocketstation etc, and not the franchises that were released on them, as a direct result of this, the PlayStation brand is more iconic than the Nintendo brand.

Nobody is saying Nintendo doesn't have some of the most iconic franchises in history here, but iconic franchises and iconic brands are two different things, if the first thing you think of when you think "Nintendo" is franchises and not the Nintendo hardware itself, what you are doing is mistaking franchise icon for platform/brand icon.