Rockstar Games has not released a new Midnight Club game for almost two decades. However, a fifth instalment reportedly reached the early development stage before being abandoned.
Former Rockstar senior designer Kris Roberts discussed the project in a recent interview. He said that, when he left the company in 2010, a core team at Rockstar San Diego was still working on the street-racing series.
Roberts recalled that the developers had begun prototyping cities, with London apparently being used for map-development work. The project was being referred to as Midnight Club 5, or by whatever final name Rockstar intended to use, but development did not continue.
In a new interview with Insider Gaming, Roberts attributed the cancellation to several connected problems rather than one isolated decision.
Development tensions at Rockstar
One major issue was a significant dispute between Rockstar’s New York headquarters and the San Diego studio over missed development deadlines. Roberts described the conflict as substantial, although he suggested that scheduling was only part of the story.
Creative control was another source of friction. The San Diego team reportedly believed that Midnight Club was a strong series that would have been regarded as successful in most studio environments. Instead, Roberts said the team felt it received less recognition and respect than it deserved.
Roberts characterised the internal perception as a capable, world-class project that was still treated as secondary because it was not Grand Theft Auto.
That comparison was especially difficult for a studio responsible for a well-regarded racing franchise. The team believed its work was solid, but felt the series was judged against Rockstar’s biggest property rather than on its own merits.
Midnight Club was competing with major racing games
Roberts also pointed to internal data suggesting that Midnight Club was performing competitively against Need for Speed and Burnout. Players were reportedly spending more time with Rockstar’s racing game than with those rival series.
Even that evidence apparently did not change management’s view of the franchise. For readers interested in the broader appeal of digital driving games, RETROCADE’s racing simulators offer a modern way to bring that genre into an arcade setting.
No return for the series yet
Almost 20 years after Midnight Club: Los Angeles launched on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the franchise still has no announced new game, remake or remaster. Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive did mention Midnight Club during an earnings call in 2022, showing that the series has not entirely disappeared from corporate memory.
That acknowledgement has not led to a revival. For now, the unfinished London prototype and the cancelled fifth game remain a glimpse of where Rockstar’s urban racing series might have gone.
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