Nintendo is far more iconic, their characters are known the world over from every age, to every gender, to every nationality. No company (besides Sega) has characters or franchises as iconic as Nintendo. I do think Xbox has an extremely iconic franchise with Halo. I don't see Sony having one just yet.

We are a niche race, even if gamers often think we're the center of the universe and our hobby is loved by all. If anything the perceptions of the common folk, those that have no interest or even worse, emotional investment in gaming whatsoever and thus truly unbiased, has more weight on the truthfulness of the statement of what is more iconic in the real world, than our own. Ask any random person on the street to point to a device you can play a video game on and they will point to a PlayStation. Ask any random person what a video game is and they will point to Mario. This is how it stands in real life. In fact, probably most wouldn't even know the latter has nothing to with or can't be played on the former, so what is 'iconic' anyway. Asking gamers will only result in responses and discussions like in this very thread, loaded with personal bias and will in fact especially be influenced by nostalgia or some sense of 'loyalty'. Myself included, so it's all pointless bickering anyway.

You are not taking into account value though. everyone might like a tablet, but more people are vvilling to pay more for an apple tablet.

everyone might like mario but people might pay more to play something else.

This is a fun thread.

Fair enough.  But the guy I quoted said the Wii was out 12-16 months before the PS3.  I'm sure it wasn't THAT big of a lead!

Plus (and we're getting of topic) he mentioned the Wii's price advantage.  It definitely was inexpensive but gamers tend to buy what they think they'll enjoy instead of what's cheap.  Remember the 'Cube and N64 were super cheap but still didn't beat the PlayStations.  The Dreamcast was dirt cheap when PS2 launched.  Genesis was cheaper than SNES with free games!  Xbox was cheaper than PS3 and PS3 outsold it from launch--just not fast enough to overcome a one year lead until almost a decade later. I can think of more examples.

Launch dates have been hit or miss, too.  Launching early or later doesn't seem to determine a winner.

We can pick and choose variables and make excuses to suit our agenda.  Hell, I'm sure I do it too.  Doesn't change the fact that whatever Nintendo did last gen worked... and this gen it is an epic fail!

I've never been so lost in my life. Your response has nothing to do with what I'm saying.

Let me spell it out for you. To be iconic you need to not only be popular (as you say) but it also needs to have value. If 600 people each spend $1000 on playstation and 601 people each spend $100 on Nintendo. Nintendo is more popular, but clearly people find Playstation more iconic.

Not even close, just take a look at PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale's lacking and pathetic roster.

And if they tried to pull off an amiibo kind of thing it would flop so hard.

So many feelings! I can't handle it!

At this point I would say "Yes". In some countries it is a bigger name in gaming. Playstation at this point has indeed earned their place as one of the gaming "Gods". Up there with Nintendo and Steam.