7. Actually Analyze And Comprehend Things
Probably the biggest failure of Japanese gaming in the last generation was the wave of games emulating things like Gears of War in an attempt to appeal to western gamers. Not only did they fail to standout against the rest of the cover shooter clones popping up in the west, but they didn't seem to get the feel right or really appeal to anyone. But it's just a symptom of a larger problem Japan can't seem to analyze anything properly. Notable examples include shelving plans to release a Gundam Xbox 360 game after it flopped in Japan due to the tiny Japanese install base and shoving the Valkyria Chronicles franchise onto PSP when it could only make over a million sales thanks to the absurd PS3 prices of the time (in 2008, the PS3 cost anywhere from $400 to $500). The lack of proper analysis hurts two groups, gamers and Japanese game companies. The gamers suffer when the companies make incorrect decisions based on their poor analyses and stop making new, better games. For the game companies, it means they don't actually learn anything useful from their mistakes and wind up making things worse when they make games that only appeal to the shrinking fanbase in Japan, a definite losing strategy in an era of ubiquitous international business.