Here is my opinion on the two issues at hand:

1.) Leaks -- It is somewhat silly of Aquamarine to try and prevent numbers from exiting the GAF forums. It would be understandable if GAF were a small, enclosed community. But GAF is known as the largest gaming forum in the world. I might be wrong, but I've read data of over 100K members. So, by obscuring the numbers, you still have 100K people that can see them. Not only VGC members, but also members of other forums, journalists, tradesmen, researchers, students etc. etc. To think that none of those 100K members will use the data for their own purposes is really strange.
Of course, the issue then is two-pronged:
a.) Aquamarine obviously likes attention. Surely that in a month of his/her ban, he/she would have found a better way to disseminate the numbers, either by PMs to the moderators, PMs to a selected group, forming a small, invitation only forum etc. But no, GAF and 100K+ audience is still the best choice. The fear of getting caught is certainly much smaller than the joy of being in the spotlight.
b.) Also, GAF ownership definitely profits from those leaks, as it gets extra memberships and an undivided attention from the press, thus not being in their interest to have AM go away. A mutually beneficial arrangement.
Therefore, I doubt that we will stop getting the numbers, no matter how many times they are leaked outside GAF.


2.) Sales, XOne sales in particular --- VGC overtracked by 50K. While it would be simpler to chalk that overtracking to the last week, the truth is probably somewhere in between -- minor overtrackings throughout the month, with a major 30-35K overtrack in week 4.
Week 4 was probably over because of the algorhythm giving too much significance to a Sunset bundle. Sunset was overtracked as well, so it is understandable where the error might have occured.
This error then led to major overtracking in Nov. Week 1, as MS's statement was used with erroneous numbers. Also, MS's PR was very vague, leading us to believe that they won Oct. Week 4, while in all actuality it was just referring to the 10 days of discounts.
It is reasonable to assume so, because the price-cut bundles were announced in Week 4, and Sunset is by no means a must-have-now game that would entice gamers not to wait 5 days for a $50 discount. Thus Oct Week 4 dropped a bit from the prediction, backloading the Nov Week 1+ (Nov 2 -Nov 12 MS announcement), giving them a 200%+ jump, but to about 200K, not almost 300K. Enough to win over Sony, definitely, but nowhere close to the total domination we were led to assume.

How about we don't post the actual numbers but a range of sales? So ps4 280k to 320k and Xbox One 150k to 180 or something. As long as someone has the actual numbers those can then be used for VGC adjustments.

I don't know why the wishes of a leaker should be respected to the extent that the numbers are not put in these threads at all. It is patently ridiculous for a leaker to demand their leak not be re-leaked. I'd rather the leak got well and truly plugged than buy into this sort of power trip.

aqua should be a plumber instead. 

i literally laughed like you in your profile pic! 

This over tracking for October really is giving me doubts for November. X1 should be ahead as of now but that can all change on BF. I kinda want MS to win just to make the warz a little more interesting but at the same time if SOny take November they can focus on beating the 360's win streak!

Looks pretty bad for Xbone if this figure is legit. Also, seems that Bayo didn't help WiiU at all...

the bad thing about this though is that it means their triples for the start of november is not really as big as we thought. That dents it's early lead big time and gives the PS4 a chance of beating it. 

He overstimated the 2nd and third week, it will obviously drop a lot after the big boost from the first week (packs AC/SO,COD for free, 50 dollars less, Marketing for call of and AC...).

We can't really predict BF numbers, it's always...well...it's BF...

Anyway, the Xone is overtracked by 60k then for october, and already by 70/100k only for the first week of november...

And since when NPD numbers are copyrighted material? It is quite reaching to mod based on that. And if it was really moddable then these threads should have been banned from the beggining.

Well, Ms PR will probably be doing this :

And say something like : "We're The best sellers this month for hardware with the Xbox" (xbox one + xbox 360)

Before the numbers were either leaked with a range, or given to us straight from NPD. The graph literally said "DO NOT SHARE THIS" or something on the top which is close enough for me.

Anyway, yeah because of the events in this thread it's pretty much a certainty that we won't be getting NPD leaks from now on. You can agree or disagree with what we said, fine, but at the end of the day it was merely to try and keep these threads going. As it stands it seems like that won't be possible.