According to an industry analyst, The Witcher 4 CD is set to be Project Red's most ambitious project yet. Mateusz Krzanowski of Noble Securities (via Clauseam Gamer ) estimates The Witcher 4's budget to be around $778.9 million (when converted from Zloty), making it the studio's most expensive game to date.
Chrzanowski believes that development costs will total $389 million, and the rest of the money will be used for marketing. CD Projekt Red is no stranger to breaking the bank on marketing costs – hiring Keanu Reeves to work on and subsequently promote Cyberpunk 2077 couldn't have been cheap.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – the game that catapulted CDPR to the pinnacle of AAA development – cost around $81 million to develop, while Cyberpunk 2077 had a higher budget of around $400 million.
Big budget, big expectations
If The Witcher 4 cost $800 million, the title would have to be hugely successful to turn a profit. In comparison, Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 reportedly cost $300 million to develop, and there were murmurs that the game probably didn't sell enough to justify that price. However, Spider-Man 2 eventually cleared 16 million units a few years after its release, which probably represents a substantial profit.
As of May 2025, The Witcher 3 has sold 60 million copies, which is why CD Projekt Red is willing to throw huge amounts of money at a sequel. If Witcher 4 were to reach that number of sales, then a behemoth budget would be justified.
Waiting 12 years for Witcher 4 means it's not really Witcher 4 anymore
The Witcher 3 transformed what it means 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 with the game not expected to be released until late 2027 at the earliest. We know we'll be playing Ciri (now voiced by Ciara Berkeley), we know we're going to be exploring a lot of new areas, including Korvir, and we know Geralt will appear in some fashion as Doug Cockle reprises his role.
We got a taste of what the gameplay might look like from the Unreal Engine 5 tech demo released by CD Projekt RED, though nothing has been finalized yet.
Although Cyberpunk 2077 is now considered by some to be one of the greatest RPGs of all time, the game started out in a notoriously bad state and was largely burned by the studio that developed from The Witcher 3. With this in mind, CD Projekt Red will be keen to ensure that The Witcher 4 isn't released until it's completely ready.
