I voted Nathan Drake, but on reflection I actually think Spider-Man makes a much better mascot. Spider-Man actually has the widespread recognition that can compete with Mario. None of the other characters listed are anywhere close to either Spider-Man or Mario in recognition. Spider-Man is everywhere, and if Sony can get people to think about Playstation whenever they see Spider-Man then that would be a huge win for Sony.

Drake, Kratos, and R&C, imo.

Krazy Ken!

Those two cats from Japan, Toro and....other cat.

Depends who you talk to. They have too many to single one out.

Sony has none and I see it this way.

In nintendos case Mario is the mascot because he is a versitile character, not a one trick pony. Mario has been used in singel frame platformers, scrolling platformers, golf games, a tennis referee, a boxing referee, fotball games, baseball games, fighting games, puzzle games, racing games, party games etc. This helps building a strong brand around Mario (at a point in time Mario was more recognised than Mickey Mouse, I don’t know if this is true anymore tho). Most (almost all) people in the western world see Mario and know it’s that videogame character and in most cases specifically know it’s that Nintendo game character.

One of Segas failings is that they never made Sonic versitile, it was only a blue spikey character that could go fast. People that are not that invested into videogames will probably recognise it’s a videogame character, but probably won’t make the connection to Sega specifically. Sega should have stuck their guns to their original mascot Alex Kid but fudged it up in their 90ies effort to make a ”rad” mascot for all the ”mature” people playing Megadrive/Genesis. Sonics only saving grace is that he has been around since the 90ies.

Masterchief is just another generic GI Joe actionfigure for non gaming people. MCs brand recognition is close to 0 outside the gaming community.

All of above mentioned characters for team Sony are just one trick ponies and lack the versitility to create a mascot with a strong brand. R&C or Sackboy you probably would be able to make into mascots, buth the other ones nah.

You can always ask if sony needs a mascot and in short: probably not. But it wouldn’t hurt either.

Excellent post. Also IMO Mario and Sonic come from an era were Video Games were marketed almost exclusively towards children and young teens. Having a cute marketable character helped. To be Fair to Sonic the 2-D iterations were excellent and so was the cartoon series around its lore. Mario had few missteps in that area including that one awful live action movie .

Nintendo did much better creating different games in different genres utilizing the Mario Brand, games which were also critically excellent such as Mario kart. Most importantly perhaps Mario was a able to make a spectacular transition into the 3-D realm, where as Sonic Adventure was a good game but not an all time great title. Mario Party, Mario Tennis etc. We're very good games even in the begginng. Heck Mario RPG is considered a classic proving that Nintendo was very cautious  with it's franchise character. Sonic had a few spins off that were mediocre like Sonic R or terrible like the one Sonic title that was a Mario Party clone... I had it on DC and I even forgot its name lol.

Well from my point of view Mario also managed the transition to 3D because he wasn’t a one trick pony. There was a freedom that allowed Mario to do what ever was needed to make 3D feasable. All sonic had was speed and ”blast processing” whitch severley restricted what you could do with him when going 3D.

This is incredibly corny but Crash will always be their mascot in my heart. Doesn't matter if it's multiplat nowadays.

Speaking objectively though, I think Sackboy had a chance but the fact that LBP3 didn't make enough of an impact burned that bridge. Nowadays, I think the closest character they have to a mascot is Kratos. Nathan Drake is of course very popular but I believe his fanbase isn't that large worldwide. Most people love the Uncharted games but don't care that much about him. GoW on the other hand has always shined the brightest due to Kratos' memorable design and personality which used to be really two-dimensional but thankfully they corrected that with the new PS4 game.

They don't have one, thankfully. Each IP can represent itself.