Rockstar shifted its focus elsewhere, leaving those who wanted to race out in the cold – and a former Rockstar developer has spoken about it…

Nearly twenty years have passed since Rockstar released Midnight Club: Los Angeles, the latest installment in the arcade-racing franchise. Fans of the series have practically given up hope of seeing another installment. However, Kris Roberts, a former designer at Rockstar San Diego, revealed to Kiwi Talkz that there had been a Midnight Club 5 project that was ultimately canceled by Take-Two. It seems that the publisher looked down on the Midnight Club team because the popularity of the series paled in comparison to that of Grand Theft Auto.

“When I left, the core Midnight Club team continued to develop. I think they had even created some prototype cities. I recall that they were doing map development for London. They were making an effort and had started work on Midnight Club 5, or whatever it was going to be called, but it didn’t last and was canceled. We felt that, in any other studio environment, Midnight Club was a solid game. We never got the accolades or the reception we deserved. The New York perspective was, ‘You’re not Grand Theft Auto.’ When you’re the red-headed stepchild project, you know you’re doing a good job and you’re world-class, but you’re still treated as inferior. It was challenging. When they canceled it, it was clear that Midnight Club was over and everything would be Grand Theft Auto from then on. That’s just the way it was” – Roberts said.

Take-Two Interactive re-registered the trademark in 2012, and CEO Strauss Zelnick most recently mentioned the arcade-racing series during a 2022 investor conference call. However, all signs point to Midnight Club effectively being dead in the water. After all, this is by no means the only Rockstar series to be shelved in favor of Grand Theft Auto. The same fate has befallen Bully, L.A. Noire, and even Max Payne, although Rockstar did at least outsource the remakes of the first two games in the series to their original developer, Remedy Entertainment.

The only other Rockstar series likely to receive a new installment is Red Dead Redemption, given that 115 million copies have been sold to date, 85 million of which came from Red Dead Redemption 2.

Source: WCCFTech, Insider Gaming