Argument147【0806G-Sunbird小组】第3次作业

zxxx2972UID: 2367399

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.'
提纲：
   1 the argument simply equates the favor of lifelike feature with the prevalence of video games and cites unauthentic evidence to support this point.
   2 even though potential customers favor these new video games, there is no indication that this favor will lead to increasing sale.
   3 the author unfairly assumes that the increasing sale on the company's new production would increase the sale of the company, which is not actually the case.
正文：
The editorial asserts that the sales of Whirlwind video games are likely to increase dramatically in the next few months. To support his conclusion, the editorial refers to a recent survey. However, this argument is problematic for several reasons.

First of all, the argument simply equates the favor of lifelike feature with the favor of video games and refers to a relevant survey to support this point. However, validity of this survey is open to doubt. The author gives insufficient information about the procedure of this survey. In fact, it is likely that a significant amount of people who participate in this survey are not 10-26 years old. If so, the result would be weakened. In addition, the author fails to take into account other possible factor such as the stability of running these games, the story of these games and so forth. We still can not put up with a game which frequently restarts our computers even though the game possesses of lifelike video.

Secondly, even though potential customers favor these new video games, there is no indication that this favor will lead to increasing sales. The argument fails to rule out the other factors influencing the sales of these productions. It is possible that these games are rather expensive. Considering that the potential customers of these games are people aging from 10 to 25 years old, most of who still live depending on their parents, we can’t anticipate such kind of people to afford these games. Moreover, the author mentions that games with realistic graphics require state-of-the art computers. Common sense tells us that most of people would not pay for the new computer merely for the purpose of playing games. Without ruling out the other possible factors, it is difficult to convince us that the sales of these new games would increase.

Finally, the author fails to establish convincing relationship between the sales of new products and the whole sales of Whirlwind video game. In fact, it is likely that sale of these new games only counts for a small amount of the whole sales of this company. If so, the author can not predict that the sales of Whirlwind video games are likely to increase in the next few months unless searching out and having solved the reason accounting for the sale decline of Whirlwind video games over the past two years.

In sum, the argument fails to be cogent. To strengthen it, the author should provide more information about the survey and provide evidence to rule out the above-mentioned possibilities that might weaken the argument.

hope~~UID: 2416007

不好意思可能得晚写发上来了!:handshake