Reading the thread, it's hard not to think that if Aqua was under that much stress / pressure and Cream was about to lose his source then we were nearing the end of the age of NPD leaks no matter what we would have done to hide the data.
The only shame is that we've lost a good poster (great poster, actually) for a while because of it. Made me laugh that it happened at the same time as Cream losing his source because I always personally suspected that Aqua and Cream were the same person, despite having no real reason to believe it. I'm sure mods would know if that was the case and stop it / disclose it, but it was always a suspicion I had, and now we've lost both at the same time. I mean - has anyone ever seen them in the same room? j/k
I appreciated Aqua's valiant attempts to hide the data and keep the party bumping but from the outset it was clear it wasn't going to work as certain users were pulling quotes out of the email field and sharing them immediately. I can't imagine how you'd stop that happening, or educate all Gaffers at once as to both the new system of posting data and the fact that discussing the actual numbers isn't acceptable. We get new users coming in every month screwing it up, as well as stubborn people being difficult (as we regrettably saw in this thread). In truth, once the numbers are on Gaf in any form they are essentially public, as hard as that is to take.
I'm sure we'll get numbers anyway from somewhere else, be it working things out from PR percentage figures compared with past data or a new source. We'll be fine. I'll actually miss Aqua more because no one was faster with an answer to sales data queries in random threads. She must have a hell of a database or be a wizard with thread searching. As for Cream, I just hope he didn't get in any trouble. I enjoyed his style of posting and figuring out the unlabelled pie charts.
I also think that sales threads are a lot less interesting now than they were last year, because as far as I'm concerned the trajectories of console hardware for this generation are pretty well set at this point. It'd take something unprecedented to knock them off their current courses. The software stuff is always interesting, but when we were in the middle of finding out who was going to take the reins of the generation or just how badly the WiiU might flop, that was when things were properly intense. Anyway, thanks to everyone who posts and makes these threads fun.