According to one industry analyst, The Witcher 4 is set to be CD Projekt Red's most ambitious project yet. Noble Securities' Mateus Chrzanowski (via Clawsome Gamer) estimates The Witcher 4's budget at around $778.9 million (after Zloty conversion), which is more expensive than any of the studio's games to date.
Chrzanowski believes development costs will total $389 million, with the rest of the money going toward marketing. CD Projekt Red is no stranger to breaking the bank on marketing costs – hiring Keanu Reeves to star in and then promote Cyberpunk 2077 couldn't have been cheap.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — the game that catapulted CDPR to the top of AAA development — cost around $81 million to develop, while Cyberpunk 2077 had a significantly higher budget of around $400 million.
Big budget, big expectations
If The Witcher 4 were to cost $800 million, the title would have to be extremely successful to turn a profit. In comparison, Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 reportedly cost $300 million to develop, and there have been whispers that the game may not be selling well enough to justify that cost. However, Spider-Man 2 ended up clearing 16 million units a few years after its release, which probably represents a significant profit.
As of May 2025, The Witcher 3 has sold 60 million copies, which is probably why CD Projekt Red is willing to throw a huge amount of money into the sequel. If The Witcher 4 were to achieve that number of sales, then the huge budget would be justified.
12 years of waiting for The Witcher 4 means it's not really The Witcher 4 anymore
The Witcher 3 changed what it meant to be an RPG, but The Witcher 4 will have a hard time living up to it.
We know a surprising amount about The Witcher 4, as the game isn't expected to release until late 2027. We know we'll be playing Ciri (now voiced by Ciara Berkeley), we know we'll be exploring several new regions including Korvir, and we know Geralt will make an appearance in some way with Doug Cockle reprising his role.
We got a taste of what the game might look like from the Unreal Engine 5 tech demo released by CD Projekt Red, though nothing is finalized yet.
Although Cyberpunk 2077 is now considered by some to be one of the best RPGs of all time, the game launched in an infamously bad state, burning away a lot of the goodwill the studio had built up from The Witcher 3. With that in mind, CD Projekt Red will be eager to make sure The Witcher 4 doesn't come out until it's absolutely ready.
