Witcher 4 could be CD Projekt Red's biggest project yet - at least in terms of cash

An analyst has estimated that The Witcher 4 could see CD Projekt RED spend close to $800 million across both its development and marketing costs.

As reported by Mateus Chrzanowski, a Polish analyst for Noble Securities and published by Strefa Inwestorow, the current budget for development costs is currently sitting at around £389 million. This budget is expected to be matched for the game’s marketing, taking total costs up to a projected $778 million.

Compared to the development costs of The Witcher 3, this appears to be a ten-times increase in development costs alone. However, much of this can be attributed to the challenging market and dramatic rise in AAA development costs.

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CD Projekt RED is also moving away from its in-house RED Engine for Witcher 4 with it swapping over to Epic’s Unreal Engine 5. This will no doubt have incurred additional costs as it hires new staff experienced with the alternative game engine.

Speaking of staff, that’s also seen an increase versus CDPR’s last outing in the world of the Witcher. The third instalment reportedly had around 240 people working on the game consistently - Witcher 4 currently has 447 on its permanent payroll, according the developer’s 2025 earnings report.

All of this seems to point to The Witcher 4 being CDPR’s biggest project yet. Following Cyberpunk 2077, it has some pretty big expectations lying on its shoulders.

While Cyberpunk is now generally revered by fans, we can’t forget the horrific launch that nearly wiped out the entirety of the Polish developer’s goodwill. The team will no doubt be taking every measure possible to avoid history repeating itself with The Witcher 4.

There’s currently no release date for the anticipated RPG. All we’ve seen of it so far is a CG trailer, plus an in-engine tease that CDPR stressed wasn’t representative of gameplay, but merely visual fidelity.

The Witcher 4 will swap Geralt for Ciri as its protagonist, and will see her travel north to the mountains of Kovir and Poviss.

A secret DLC is rumoured to be on the way for The Witcher 3, which should hopefully tide fans over until the new game’s launch. CD Projekt RED is yet to confirm its existence, though.

For now, we’ll have to resort to watching the Unreal Engine 5 demo on repeat. And replaying Witcher 3 for the seventh time, of course.