Definitely. I made 3 PSN accounts. One American, one European and one Japanese because their offerings differ a bit. Most of my friends also have at least 2. There's also the fact that multiple family members can use the same console each having their own account.

that line of thought doesn't make sense to me

Why would MS refuse to tell a highly influential business partner like Wargaming (World of Tanks) how big the market is they can realistically reach by developing their hit IP for their systems?

Maybe he even signend an NDA concerning Gold subscriber numbers and such and accidently broke it (although this 17m number might very well be from last year), but that won't result in MS banning WoT or sth if anything it results in a ~$10k fine, which is pocket change to Kislyi.

my brother has made at least 10. at the very least. could be up to 20 with all the ones he deleted. 

Seems kinda of low. Only just over 1/3 of Xbox owners.

It may seem low, but it was never going to be more than 40million. I doubt there are even 40 millions active xbox owners let alone gold subs.

Its still a decent % compared to the userbase.

imho its something about ~60m (for both x360 and ps3)

40m would be only 50% "active" users.

gtaV sold over 15m units so nearly 40% of all active user bought the game?

Seems about right. My gold sub hasn't been active since 2008 since I hardly play online anyway. It also explains MS shift to focus on TV and an online console to boost those subscription rates. That's where the money is, and although 17m is a lot, it's just a drop in the bucket for MS.

35 million sales on VGC. At this point it's almost 40% of non nintendo console gamers

Now you're making stuff up. PS4 launch brought a 90% increase in PS Plus subscriptions and more than half of PS4 owners are PS Plus suscribers.

More than half of PS4 owners = at least 5.5 mill

5.5 mill = 90% increase

Based on this the actual number of paying PS Plus subscribers could very well be around 11.6 mill as 5.5 mill/90*100 (subscribers before PS4 launch) + 5.5 (subscribers joined after launch) = 11.6 (subscribers in total).

Since then there have been an increase due to Driveclub becoming free for subscribers in 2 weeks and an increase due to Destiny launch which made PS4 sales go up 300% in eg. the UK. Some of those new PS4+Destiny owners might want to play online. Just a hunch :)

But we don't know how many of these keep PS+ so numbers could also drop, especially if many stop playing Destiny.