Amidst reports and rumours that CD Projekt RED might be looking to fill its release gap in 2026 with a new expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, there have also been many predictions about the development of The Witcher 4. According to Strefa Inwestorów (via Clawsome Gamer), Noble Securities analyst Mateusz Chrzanowski has predicted that CD Projekt RED will end up spending more than $800 million on The Witcher 4.
Chrzanowski has noted that the actual development price is likely closer to PLN 1.4 billion (roughly $388 million). He also expects CD Projekt to spend a similar amount of money on marketing the title, which will likely bring up its overall expenses to the $800 million mark. He has also offered predictions about the development budget of other CD Projekt titles, such as the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel Project Orion.
According to Chrzanowski, development of the sequel to the cyberpunk open-world RPG will end up costing around PLN 1.5 billion (roughly $416 million). A chunk of this cost is associated with the rumoured multiplayer game modes. Along with this, the launch window for Orion has also been reportedly pushed back to Q4 2030.
Chrzanowski had previously also reaffirmed that the DLC for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is “100 percent” happening. He cites the company’s incentive program being short PLN 700 million (roughly $194 million), which could be met if new paid content for one of CD Projekt’s games is released.
As for the rumours about new The Witcher 3 DLC, Chrzanowski predicts that it will be released in May, and will sell 11 million copies over the next year. Along with this, he has also predicted a development budget of PLN 52 million (roughly $14.5 million) for this DLC.
While CD Projekt RED is yet to make any DLC announcements, reports have indicated that it will take players to Zerrikania, east of Nilfgaard. Along with this, IGN Poland has also noted that it has known about the DLC for “a very long time”. It is worth noting that these are details about the DLC from early in its development, and that they might have been changed since then. Kovir is noted as being another one of the possible locations for its story.
Development of The Witcher 4 has been going quietly at CD Projekt RED, with no new details having been revealed in quite some time. Back in December, however, CD Projekt co-CEO Michał Nowakowski had spoken about the company’s hiring policies, and whether it has been changed because of the rise of generative AI in the IT industry.
“We are not really hiring ‘classic’ IT – but I understand this is supposed to be about gaming industry talent – the availability of talent has perhaps increased a bit over the past three years, but I’m not sure I’d actually ascribe it to AI, to be perfectly honest – some studios have been going through turmoil; there were some project closures and so on, which led to many redundancies in the gaming industry; we’ve all seen that – it’s been very dramatic in many cases – but – literally kill me here, but I don’t recall a single time when it would be attributable directly to AI,” he explained.
He also went on to note that the company isn’t looking at reducing its headcount thanks to the introduction of generative AI any time soon. Rather, the company’s use of AI largely revolves around “productivity areas”, and he isn’t yet convinced that the technology is able to “sit down and make games”.
“That’s our take. It doesn’t mean it’s not gonna be useful, but it’s not gonna be making The Witcher 5, or 6, or anything like that.”
