{"id":5668,"date":"2026-02-02T14:35:35","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T14:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/?p=5668"},"modified":"2026-02-04T14:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T14:44:07","slug":"we-released-nine-games-in-2025-and-only-one-was-a-flop-french-publisher-super-meeple-on-how-avoiding-overproduction-is-proving-a-recipe-for-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/02\/we-released-nine-games-in-2025-and-only-one-was-a-flop-french-publisher-super-meeple-on-how-avoiding-overproduction-is-proving-a-recipe-for-success\/","title":{"rendered":"“We released nine games in 2025 and only one was a flop”: French publisher Super Meeple on how avoiding overproduction is proving a recipe for success"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Less is more for French board game publisher\u00a0Super Meeple<\/a>, which says its strategy of keeping a tight rein on the number of complex titles it releases each year is paying off in an industry rife with overproduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Super Meeple, which releases its own designs as well as localising major titles such as Ark Nova<\/a> and Gaia Project<\/a>, says it is planning a “downward trend” for the number of games it releases each year in order to help each title stand out in an increasingly competitive market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The publisher said that of the nine games it released last year, excluding expansions and sequels, only one was a “failure” – civilization builder Beyond the Horizon<\/a>, the follow-up to Dennis K Chan’s highly regarded 2020 release Beyond the Sun<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It added that its biggest success of 2025 was “undoubtedly” fantasy animal reserve game Wondrous Creatures<\/a>, while the rest of its releases were “in line with our overall expectations”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Wondrous Creatures || Photo Credit: Bad Comet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The company said in an annual review post on Facebook, “Everything mentioned here is obviously based on our experience, and perhaps others have a different perspective, but the observation is pretty much the same everywhere, namely that overproduction automatically leads to a decrease in the percentage of successful games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are mostly responsible for overproduction: from authors who want to be signed to buyers who want something new, not to mention publishers who need to produce and shops\/distributors who need to meet buyer demand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Some can afford to be less involved in this overproduction, with a few games in their catalogue that are huge successes. Of course, they are more relaxed and can afford to slow down their releases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“However, this foundation is generally, if not always, supported by family games; games with ‘infinite’ sales potential. Unfortunately, this is not the case for us, except perhaps for Kronologic and Expeditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But the pool of buyers for big games is very limited, and even if it were to grow each year (which we hope it will!), it would still be insufficient to keep a company running. Nevertheless, we are aware of this overproduction and try to limit the number of releases as much as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Excluding expansions, we released seven games in 2024 and nine in 2025. We plan to release nine in 2026, as we do not want to exceed ten per year, two in edition and seven or eight in localisation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The trend will be downward as much as possible, working as hard as we can on each game and crossing our fingers that they will be successful.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Super Meeple added that while it was fortunate to have games that always sell well, such as its lighter range of Kronologic murder mystery titles and zoo-building heavyweight Ark Nova, it was seeing a slight slowdown in what it called ‘long sellers’, big sellers such as Gaia Project, Trickerion and Obsession which it described as “pillars” of its catalogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Kronologic: Paris 1920, from Super Meeple and Origames<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It said, “We still intend to keep them available in our catalogue, as new players of slightly heavier games like these need to know about them!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early last year Super Meeple said it planned to step up its own direct sales after struggling to get individual retailers to stock more than a handful of copies of each of its heavier games through 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new system for some of Super Meeple’s expert titles involves running more pre-orders on its own site for those games, which it says could increase its margin to up to \u20ac20 per game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also hoped to \u201cstrengthen engagement\u201d with retailers by allowing them to pre-order during a commitment period defined by the distributor, with any remaining games sold through its own online store or other online marketplaces and unavailable for restocking by shops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Super Meeple said that Galactic Cruise<\/a>, the first and only game to go through that system last year, sold out of all 3,000 copies – 300 through web pre-orders, 600 to partners outside France and the remaining 2,100 to stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said, “This is obviously excellent news and proves that the vast majority of shops have understood our philosophy and made a greater commitment, so\u2026 thank you! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This scenario will undoubtedly not be repeated for every game, but this initial success shows that the solution can work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The publisher said it planned to repeat the process this year for its localisation of World Order, the follow up to multi-award-winning economic class warfare simulator Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Super Meeple’s other releases this year are set to include Tikal Legend, Mythologies, Revenant, Life of Amazonia and Ayar, and the third instalment of Kronologic, Babylon 2500.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more stories like this direct to your email inbox, click here to sign up for BoardGameWire’s free email newsletter. \n\nAnd if you’ve found our reporting interesting or useful, please consider a paid subscription to help support our journalism!<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Super Meeple, which releases its own designs as well as localising major titles such as Ark Nova and Gaia Project, says it is planning a “downward trend” for the number of games it releases each year in order to help each title stand out in an increasingly competitive market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2093,92,2103,240,85,672,2106,2052,2105,1731,267,499,686,2104],"class_list":["post-5668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-2093","tag-ark-nova","tag-beyond-the-horizon","tag-eurogame","tag-france","tag-french","tag-gaia-project","tag-galactic-cruise","tag-pre-order","tag-production","tag-publisher","tag-retail","tag-super-meeple","tag-wondrous-creatures"],"blocksy_meta":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5668"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5821,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5668\/revisions\/5821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}