The next mainline Witcher game, codenamed Polaris and commonly called The Witcher 4, is shaping up to be one of the most expensive video games ever, with analysts estimating a total budget of around 780 to 800 million dollars, roughly split between development and marketing. The development cost alone is projected at about 389 million dollars, almost ten times more than what CD Projekt RED reportedly spent on The Witcher 3 and significantly more than Cyberpunk 2077’s base game budget. This growth is driven by higher production standards, rising salaries and costs, and the studio’s ambition to turn Polaris into the foundation of a whole new Witcher saga rather than just a one‑off sequel.
CD Projekt has massively scaled up its team, with more than 400 developers assigned to Polaris, which is roughly two thirds of the company’s total staff and far above the roughly 240 people who worked on The Witcher 3 at peak production. The project has already gone through an extended pre production phase and is now in full production, using Unreal Engine 5 as a new technological base to speed up development workflows and support a larger, more detailed open world. Analysts and commentators point out that such a huge budget means CD Projekt will need very strong sales for the game to pay off, but the company is betting on the global popularity of The Witcher brand, boosted by the Netflix series, and on its track record with large, content heavy RPGs to justify the scale of this investment.
