Buy The Witcher 3unless you specifically want to be beaten up. It is the cheaper of the two, and as of September 2026 it is also the one that includes both of its expansions at no extra cost — CD Projekt's own announcement says that "All owners of The Witcher 3 can now play to two acclaimed expansions" with no additional purchase. Buy Elden Ring if you want combat to be the point of the game rather than the thing between the stories.
That is the whole answer, and if it is all you came for the live prices are on the two cards below. The rest of this page is the reasoning, because these are the two biggest open-world RPGs money can buy at this price and the contents picture on one of them changed a month ago in a way no comparison written before September 2026 accounts for.
What this page does not do is tell you which is the better game. They are both landmarks and arguing about it is a hobby, not a buying decision. What a budget buyer needs to know is different and answerable: what is in the box, what the publisher still wants money for afterward, which one survives contact with a real schedule, and which one you are statistically likely to abandon. We rank on value per dollar, and value per dollar has a hard dependency on finishing things.
Three axes, in this order. 1. Contents.One of these is now effectively the complete game at the budget price and the other is base-game-only with a $39.99 expansion sitting next to it on PlayStation's own store page. That is the single biggest money difference here. 2. What the game asks of you.Not difficulty for its own sake — whether you can make progress in a 45-minute evening, because a game that needs a four-hour run-up is a game you will stop playing. 3. The upgrade path. Both carry a free upgrade of some kind and the rules are different and genuinely confusing; one of them does not apply to the version most budget buyers are about to buy, and we say which.
Every fact about editions, upgrades, player counts and ratings below comes from PlayStation's own game pages, CD Projekt's own announcements or the ESRB, all fetched the day this page was written and listed in Sources at the foot. Prices render live on the cards and are never typed into this text.
The Witcher 3 vs Elden Ring, decided
Contents: this is where the money is, and it moved in September 2026
Here is the comparison nobody else has updated yet. CD Projekt released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remasteredon September 29, 2026, and alongside it made the game's two expansions free. PlayStation's own store page now states that owners on PS4 or PS5 can play Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine at no extra cost. Those are not small add-ons. Blood and Wine is a new region with its own long campaign and is widely held to be better than most full-price games.
Now look at the other side. PlayStation lists Elden Ring's Standard Edition at $59.99 and sells its Shadow of the Erdtree expansion as a separate $39.99 add-on, with bundled editions at $79.99 and $99.99. Shadow of the Erdtree is excellent and it is also, at list price, more expensive than the Elden Ring disc now costs. So the budget buy there is base game only, and the complete experience is a two-purchase project.
Put plainly: at the prices on the cards above, one of these games is the complete thing and the other is chapter one. That is not a knock on Elden Ring — the base game is enormous and hundreds of hours of it exist without the expansion — but it is the kind of difference this site exists to point at. The same reasoning applied across the whole shelf is in what does definitive edition mean and best cheap game collections.
One honest footnote, since we would rather give you the awkward detail than let you find it after paying. CD Projekt has also announced a further expansion, Songs of the Past, as a paidexpansion arriving in 2027 for the Remastered version. So The Witcher 3 is not finished taking money either — it is simply that the two expansions that already exist are now included, and the one that does not exist yet is the one you would pay for.
The upgrade rules, and the one that will catch you
Both games carry a free upgrade and the two work completely differently.
Elden Ring is the simple one. PlayStation's page states that "Players who purchase the PlayStation®4 version can upgrade for free to the PlayStation®5 version." Buy the cheap PS4 disc, upgrade, play the current-gen version. Two caveats from PlayStation's own support pages: "You need to keep the disc inserted each time to play the game" after a disc-based upgrade, and "PS4 game discs can't be used with the PlayStation®5 Digital Edition" — a driveless console cannot do any of this.
The Witcher 3is the one to read twice. There are two separate free upgrades in its history and only one of them helps a PS4-disc buyer. The older one, from December 2022, was the next-gen update, and CD Projekt's press release confirms it was free for owners of the PS4, Xbox One and PC versions — that is the upgrade that gets a cheap disc running as a PS5 game. The new one, the 2026 Remastered edition, is different: PlayStation states it "is a free upgrade for existing owners on PlayStation 5" and that it does not apply to the PS4 version. So do not buy the PS4 disc expecting the brand-new Remastered release to drop into your library; check the listing you are actually buying before you count on that specific version.
The free expansions are the part that is not in doubt: PlayStation's page puts those with owners on PS4 or PS5. The full set of PlayStation upgrade mechanics is in do PS4 games work on PS5, and the format question generally is physical vs digital PS5 games.
What each game asks of you, which is the real cost
The Witcher 3 asks for your attention.Its combat is the weakest thing about it — serviceable, never thrilling — and its quests are the best in the genre, full stop. A side quest about a missing goat turns into a forty-minute story with a decision you will think about later. The cost is that the opening hours are slow and dense and the menus are from 2015, and plenty of people put it down in the first five hours and never come back. If you do get through that, this is a game that gives you something every single evening you spend on it, in pieces as small as you like.
Elden Ring asks for your patience and your pride. Its combat is the point, its stories are mostly ambient, and it will stop you cold at least a dozen times. What makes it the most forgiving game its studio has made is structural rather than merciful: when a boss beats you, you can ride somewhere else, get stronger and come back, which is the single biggest reason people finish it when they bounced off Dark Souls. The cost is that a 45-minute session can end with nothing accomplished, and you need to be the kind of person for whom that is fine.
The budget consequence is the one we care about. If you have two evenings a week, The Witcher 3 reliably converts them into progress and Elden Ring sometimes does not. If beating a hard thing is the reason you play games at all, that is reversed. Our full single-game verdicts are is The Witcher 3 worth it and is Elden Ring worth it.
Solo, co-op and subscriptions
PlayStation lists The Witcher 3 as a 1-player game. There is no multiplayer, no subscription requirement, nothing to switch off: you buy it once and it is complete forever, which is the quality we rank highest in best cheap single-player games.
Elden Ring is listed as 1 player with "Supports up to 6 online players with PS Plus", and online play is optional. That matters two ways. If summoning another player is how you plan to get past the hard parts — a completely legitimate way to play it — add a subscription to the price on the card; is PS Plus worth it has the tiers. If you are not subscribing, it is still a complete solo campaign with the console offline.
Ratings: both are adult games, and one is further over the line
The ESRB rates both Mature 17+. For Elden Ring the descriptors are Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes and Violence. For The Witcher 3 PlayStation's page lists Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content and Use of Alcohol — a notably longer list, and if you are buying for a household with younger players that is the relevant difference between them. Both pages also list In-Game Purchases. If you are shopping for a younger player, start at cheap games for kids or what do ESRB ratings mean.
Is today's price the one to take?
The Witcher 3 is at the bottom of its curve and has been for years; what moves it now is a seasonal sale of a few dollars, not a repricing. With the expansions now included, the budget disc is better value this month than it has ever been, and waiting is unlikely to pay.
Elden Ring is the one still traveling. It is the newer and more expensive game, it is the one a seasonal sale genuinely moves, and if it is the one you want but the price is close rather than comfortable, the windows are in when do games go on sale and the game sale calendar. And if either game turns up dramatically below everything around it, read how to spot a fake game discount first — on games this well known, an outlier price usually means an outlier edition or an outlier seller.
The short version
Buy The Witcher 3 if: you want the most game for the least money, you care about writing and choices, you have limited evenings, or you want one purchase that is complete on arrival. Buy Elden Ring if: combat is why you play, you want a world that rewards exploring over reading, you want the option to summon help, or you have already bounced off a Witcher-style quest log. Buy neither yet if:you have under ten hours a week and no appetite for a long project — in that case the better value is on best cheap single-player games or best value games, which rank on hours you will actually spend.
