- CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 4 It is rumored to cost almost 1 billion
- A Polish analyst claims it costs about $390 million apiece for development and marketing, respectively
- This comes shortly after the analyst claimed that new DLC is on the way The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
CD Projekt Red’s next installment in The Witcher franchise is one that is highly anticipated, with The Witcher 4 seemingly set to greatly improve on its predecessor’s RPG elements and realism – and it looks like the developer may follow in the footsteps of Rockstar Games with GTA 6.
And by that I mean there is apparently a huge budget supporting the RPG. As reported by TweakTown, a Polish analyst, Mateusz Chrzanowski, claims that The Witcher 4 will cost CD Projekt Red around $800 million, with $390 million reportedly spent on the game’s development – and the same amount on marketing. This is a rough estimate based on the conversion of PLN 1.4 billion to dollars.
This latest rumor comes from the same source that recently suggested that CD Projekt Red will release a new DLC expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in May 2026. While there’s no clarification on that yet, it’s worth noting that CD Projekt Red is rumored to be working on multiple projects, so it’s not a far-fetched claim.
However, it is a big leap to believe the claim about the size of the budget here. A spend of around 800 million dollars for The Witcher 4 would place the title within the same ballpark as top games such as e.g GTA 6, which is speculated to have incurred costs of up to $2 billion in its production.
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Still, it’s true that big releases like these have big expectations behind them (esp GTA 6), and it will of course come with quite a price in terms of production and marketing.
A majority of triple-A modern games have massive budgets behind them, a notable example being Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which reportedly had a budget of $315 million.
This is a trend that has been going on for the last few years and it shows no signs of slowing down.
Analysis: big budgets for games are not always justified
Big budgets don’t always mean big successes in the gaming industry.
Take, for example, the case of Concord from Firewalk Studios (admittedly not a single-player game, but certainly an eye-opening affair compared to being a high-profile failure). This reportedly cost $400 million to make, and if you didn’t know, Concord was a massive failure, resulting in a shutdown two weeks after launch and the closure of the developer responsible.
This is just one of many examples of massive budgets being wasted, and while I doubt it will happen with CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 4I still have some concerns – especially after Cyberpunk 2077disastrous launch.
About the only developer I’ve seen consistently back up its production costs is Rockstar Games, with critically acclaimed launches such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and of course GTA 5.
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