Random generators for game/company/player names. Using the same ones over and over gets old if you run out of ideas.
Stop “compete against yourself” after you finish the game. This mechanic is great while you’re playing the story. But you can only get so good. You can’t improve on the best result, meaning if you make a second best game ever, it would only get average scores. Maybe after year 35, 50, or even 100, it could change to where you compete with a set standard. For example, you could compete with yourself up to year 35, but after that, you compete with either a random competitor, or yourself from before you maxed everything out.
Multi-topics. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t make a martial arts fantasy, or a sci-fi space game. Adding this could also help shorten the topic list, as UFO would become alien/airplane.
Market research. Game reports are great, because they give you research points and info for free. But getting the info for future use by intentionally making a bad game isn’t great. You could make something like a customer survey, something like 5 research points and $10,000. And find the relationship between PC and M rated games, or how dungeon and RPG go together, without having to make a game with that combination.
Higher 2D graphics. 3D games might be more popular, but there is no reason to make 2D games obsolete. 2D games can be very successful if the graphics are good with it. You could also make it so certain genres are more or less successful depending on graphics used. For example, military and sports would do best with 3D, romance and school would do better with 2D, and fantasy and dungeon are equally successful with either.
More game options. Like turning bubbles off, calculate all costs weekly or monthly (since games show weekly, but costs show monthly), game speed, and even a difficulty setting (easy has you compete against a base for the month you’re in, medium being the default where you compete with yourself, and hard being there is a minimum improvement from your last game, as opposed to just any improvement as in medium)
Multi-tasking. Having specialists is good, and only being able to pick 7 out of the 9 game options is balanced as well. But what about reducing the effectiveness of a specialist to let them specialize in 2 areas? For example, a normal person has 100% effectiveness in engine and AI, an AI specialist has 100% engine and 200% AI, but an engine/AI multi-tasker could have 150% for engine and AI (but you have to pay for each individually, meaning 400 research points, instead of 200). I would be happy with 133%, if 150% would be too unbalanced.
Influence. Releasing games should change the progression. For example, if you release a bunch of hit games on the G64, your games could keep Govodore alive, and instead the PC will go bankrupt. Same with Vena, and other systems that go out of style.