OP@ Do you know who Mario is?!!! lol jks

Course no one can ever kill Mario. Fellow Ninty characters such as Link can't even kill him so how is Sony or MS supposed to? Kratos? Master Chief? Nah I'll let them be.

Sony and Microsoft to start mass producing Goombas confirmed? And those bullets with the angry faces?

Even if they can't kill Mario they can at least try. I think that is what OP meant. Having absolutely nothing to compete against Mario with is just stupid.

I mean Sonic 1 was supposed to be a Mario killer, it was advertised and spoken of as one, but it faild to be one, but the game still worked out pretty damn well for Sega.

@ OP, I think MS will try and push Banjo Kazooie in the future, that's probably their best way of competing. Sony has lots of platformers, butperhaps they need to create one of higher magnitude to really make a famous character. All of Sony's platformers seem too specialized for a specific audience they need one with a broader appeal. (Perhaps LBP has a broad appeal, perhaps they just need a special Sackboy to give it a face)

I thought Sony's Mario killer was LittleBigPlanet but I may be wrong.

As for Microsoft, their Mario killer was Blinx the Timesweeper. Remember him? Exactly.

After some more thought. The only true killer of Mario will be Nintendo.

It will be their choices and future choices that may or may not silent the plumber forever.

Of course not! Anything can kill Mario.

It's hard to debate I mean, the OP never made quite clear on what terrain MArio could be "killed". In sales we can have a valid debate. Individually Mario games can be beaten by GTA, Call of duty or Pokemon just to name something random.

In platforming quality the debate get's tougher because hell, quality is subjective on it's own. I greatly prefer Mario over Ratchet and Clank in due to it's simple design yet depth of gameplay. I can imagine that someone else prefers constant action because they are ADD-sufferers with no taste (I kid, I kid)!

As a gaming-icon it is a non-issue. More people recognize Mario over Mickey Mouse. In the world he is the most well known videogame-character (though Pacman won in the US by a slim margin MArio was easly the champion in Europe and Japan.) Plus anything the other companies throw up as gaming-icons don't seem to stick. We may recognize the three green dots of light immidiatly as Sam Fisher, we see the value in Master Cheif and Snake but they aren't known to the general public as well as Mario. He will probably be recognized still even when videogaming dies...

@OP:
Mario could only die if people weren't interested anymore, but then Mario wannabes would be dead too. But just think, sooner or later everybody needs a plumber, so Mario can sleep peacefully.

Yes, but I doubt it will ever happen since it would require some new way to play platforming.

On a serious note...the mods here are VERY OVER AGRESSIVE....that ban was wack.