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Sam Li

by soniamba » Thu Mar 29, 2012 11:03 pm
The Action-Packed Gaming Company, based on the success of the previous season's video game featuring the character Sam Li, of the popular Fist of Awe series of martial arts movies, developed for the current season a similar martial arts game featuring a new character who is also a martial arts master. The new game had improved 3-D graphics, enhanced multiplayer capability, and dozens of new martial arts moves developed by real-life masters. However, marketing surveys showed that teenagers were uninterested in this new game, and the game sold very poorly.

The passage implies that an explanation for the failure of the new game is based on doubt regarding which of the following assumptions?

A) Teenagers make purchasing decisions based on the technological merits of video games, not the name recognition of the games' main characters.

B) Buyers of video games prefer to purchase games based on popular movies.

C) The Fist of Awe series of movies was extremely popular with teenagers who regularly purchase video games.

D) Technological improvement from one video game to the next does not guarantee a corresponding increase in sales.

E) The successful video game may have benefited from advertising associated with the Fist of Awe movies, a benefit the failed video game did not have.

Can somebody please explain this question and the correct answer?

OA: A
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by transfer9858 » Fri Mar 30, 2012 9:36 am
The wording of this question is what I think makes it hard. But lets go through each one.

B- This statement is completely out of scope and no where in the passage does it mention this.

C- Again, the passage says nothing about the teenagers buying the games REGULARLY. Also, key words like regularly, only, always, most of the time are wrong.

D- This can be confusing because it sounds good and its true, but has nothing to do explanation of their failure of the games-

E- Completely out of scope.

A- The question is talking about the explanation for the failure. In the passage, the key lines are "The new game had improved 3-D graphics, enhanced multiplayer capability, and dozens of new martial arts moves developed by real-life masters". From this we see that they assumed that since the games was more advanced in those areas, it would be more popular- thats the assumption.

Hope that helps
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by ice_rush » Fri Mar 30, 2012 1:43 pm
I need an expert's opinion on this question. Isn't 3D graphics part of technological merits??

tansfer9858, How is B out of scope? The character Sam Li was inspired from a mixed martial art movies series, as per the premise. Am I missing something?

[/b]

What is the source of this question? The wording doesn't sound very gmat like.
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by transfer9858 » Fri Mar 30, 2012 2:15 pm
B is completely out of scope because where in the passage do you find Buyers of video games prefer to purchase games based on popular movies?
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by ice_rush » Fri Mar 30, 2012 3:21 pm
transfer9858,

Assumptions are NEVER stated in the passage - otherwise they won't be called assumptions.

Said that, this is the part I was referring to:

....featuring the character Sam Li, of the popular Fist of Awe series of martial arts movies,.
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by Bill@VeritasPrep » Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:32 pm
The stimulus is actually about the game that followed Sam Li's game. This new game also had a martial arts master, but we don't know if the new character is from a movie franchise or not.

The question stem is awkward, but I believe it's asking for an assumption in the original argument that would be challenged by an explanation of the game's failure. The explanation is not given, so we are trying to identify something around which we could build our own explanation. To me, the stimulus points out the reasons why the new game should have been successful, but the marketing surveys show that it was not.

Choice A works because technological merits are given as the main benefits of the new game. The company assumes that the advancements are enough to sell the new game because that's what teenagers want. if that's not true, then the failure makes sense.

Bill
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