Stellar core collapse: success or failure, and future probes

Massive stars end their lives in a violent core collapse. While the expectation for the majority of them has been the formation of a protoneutron star and an optical supernova explosion, an alternate channel is the collapse to a black hole with only a limited optical transient. I will discuss recent supernova simulation results and on-going observational studies which are starting to shed light on the question of how massive stars end their lives. I will also discuss the unique insights that neutrinos can provide in future supernova neutrino datasets, including both Galactic events as well as the diffuse supernova neutrino background.