An analyst estimates that The Witcher 4 will cost €665 million, making it one of the most expensive games in history

The Witcher 4 is one of the most anticipated video games of all time, and it still remains on the distant horizon, with no confirmed release date. After the success of Cyberpunk 2077 and its redemption story following numerous launch issues, Polish studio CD Projekt now aims to surprise its fans once again with the fourth installment of The Witcher. And take note, because according to one financial analyst, this game will have an astronomical budget: €665 million. This would make it one of the most expensive video games of all time.

The Witcher 4 will be a AAA game with a huge budget, according to a Polish financial analyst

As reported by Strefa Inwestorów in mid-January, Mateusz Chrzanowski, a financial analyst at Polish firm Noble Securities, estimates that CD Projekt will invest 2.8 billion zloty—Poland’s currency—in bringing The Witcher 4 to life. At the current exchange rate, that’s about €665 million, or $779,845,500, half of which would go toward development itself, and the other half toward marketing and other promotional activities.

It should be noted that, although this information does not come from the developer itself, Noble Securities is an investment and analysis firm with a well-established presence in the Polish stock market. The company regularly produces reports on listed companies, including cost forecasts, budgets, and commercial performance based on public data, industry comparisons, and the historical performance of the companies they analyze. In other words, the estimate has a certain basis given its origin as investor-oriented financial analysis.

Although this figure may seem surreal or disproportionate, a detailed look at the known facts puts it into reasonable context. At the end of 2025, there were around 450 developers working on the game, and the adoption of Unreal Engine 5 and the technological leap it represents can be considered plausible reasons for the increase in costs.

To put the figures into perspective, The Witcher 3, the previous main installment in the series, cost approximately €40 million, of which €15 million went toward development and the remaining €25 million toward marketing. The budget for The Witcher 4 would be more than ten times greater, underscoring the difference in scale, ambition, and technology between the two projects. In any case, this estimate does not come “out of nowhere”: the video game industry has been demonstrating for years how major AAA releases are driving their budgets up to figures that seemed unthinkable not so long ago.

The most expensive video games in history: a precedent that helps put The Witcher 4 into context

Although the estimated €665 million budget for The Witcher 4 is extraordinarily eye-catching, the truth is that this is not an isolated anomaly, but rather a new step on the ladder of pharaonic budgets that only large studios such as Rockstar or CD Projekt itself can afford.

In recent years, a handful of AAA releases have broken records for investment in both development and marketing, paving the way for The Witcher 4 to follow suit:

• Grand Theft Auto V (2013): had an estimated total cost of around €240 million between development and marketing, making it the most expensive video game ever produced at the time.
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018): Rockstar’s western raised the bar even higher, with a total estimated cost of between €340 million and €500 million, according to various estimates that include its long development cycle and an unprecedented global promotional campaign.
• Cyberpunk 2077 (2020): CD Projekt itself has already signed one of the most expensive projects in history, costing around €400 million between development and marketing, according to official figures communicated to investors.

Ultimately, and in the absence of an exact figure or estimate of the actual cost of Grand Theft Auto VI (2026), The Witcher 4 would, for now, be the most expensive video game in history. The estimate of €665 million fits within a logical evolution within the AAA market, especially considering that it is an open-world blockbuster, and taking into account relevant financial factors such as increased technology costs and inflation itself. If such a large investment is confirmed, this new chapter in the saga would establish itself as a new milestone in terms of investment in the world of electronic entertainment.

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