argument147

water5045UID: 2688074

TOPIC: ARGUMENT147 - The following appeared in an editorial in a business magazine.

"Although the sales of Whirlwind video games have declined over the past two years, a recent survey of video-game players suggests that this sales trend is about to be reversed. The survey asked video-game players what features they thought were most important in a video game. According to the survey, players prefer games that provide lifelike graphics, which require the most up-to-date computers. Whirlwind has just introduced several such games with an extensive advertising campaign directed at people 10 to 25 years old, the age-group most likely to play video games. It follows, then, that the sales of Whirlwind video games are likely to increase dramatically in the next few months."
WORDS: 363          TIME: 00:35:28          DATE: 2010/3/3 20:30:24

  In this editorial,the author predicts that the sales of Whirlwind video games are likely to increase in the following months.To support this prediction,the author cites a survey that some video players prefer games providing lifelike graphics requiring the most up-to-date computers and that Whirlwind has introduced such games with advertising directed at 10 to 25
year-old people.This argument is logically unpersuasive in several respects.
  The first problem in this argument is that the author assumes the survey conducted is reliable and the survey can truly reflect preference of most video game players.However,the author fails to provide any evidence to prove that the number of people involved in the survey is large enough and those participants of the survey are representative of all the population of video game players.Without information of the survey's size or accuracy,it is entirely possible that most players prefer more bloody action or teamwork in the video games instead.
  Another problem is the assumption that Whirlwind's maing customers--people who are 10 to 25 years old,will make Whirlwind profitable.In the argument,the author cites that the age group are most likely to play video games,but it is still unknown that whether this group of people have the purchasing power to afford Whirlwind considering its games are expensive.If the answer is negative ,Whirlwind might gain little profit from these people.Or perhaps the 10 to 25 year old people have varying interest in video games,and this fact will result in players' satiation in this kind of games soon,thus the sales of Whirlwind might not increase for a while.
  Finally,the conclusion that sales of Whirlwind video games are likely to increase in the future relies on the unsubstantiated assumption that the games' players will surely buy the video games rather than download them on the Internet free of charge.Common sense tells me that in many restricts people achieve their video games from the Internet without paying any fee.So if Whirlwind video games are decoded unfortunately and can be easily downloaded on the net ,the sales of whirlwind video games are declining instead of increasing.
  In sum,this argument is unconvincing at all due to some unsubstantiated assumptions.To better assess this prediction  ,the author must provide reliable evidence to justify that the participants in the survey are representative and the video games' main players have the ability and willing to purchase their products.