It's been nearly twenty years since Rockstar released Midnight Club: Los Angeles , the latest entry in the arcade racing Midnight Club franchise. Fans of the series have practically lost hope of seeing another installment; however, former Rockstar San Diego designer Kris Roberts revealed to Kiwi Talkz ( via Insider Gaming ) that a Midnight Club 5 project existed and was eventually canned by the label, which seemed to look down on the Midnight Club team due to its massively inferior popularity compared to Grand Theft Auto.

When I left, the core Midnight Club team continued to develop. I think they had even had some prototype cities; I kind of recall London was the one they were doing map development and stuff for. There was effort, and they were starting, and they were starting Midnight Club 5, or whatever they were going to call it, but it didn’t last, and it was canceled.

The team in San Diego kind of…we felt, in any other studio environment, Midnight Club was a solid game. The perception was we never got the accolades or the reception. The New York perspective was, ‘You’re not GTA’. When you’re the red-headed stepchild project—you know, we’re doing a good job, we’re world-class, but we’re still treated less than. It was challenging.

When they cancelled it, it was pretty clear that there would be no more Midnight Club and everything was going to be GTA and stuff moving forward, and that’s just the way it was going to be.

Take-Two Interactive re-registered the trademark in 2012, and Chief Executive Officer Strauss Zelnick last acknowledged the arcade racing series in a 2022 investor call, but all signs point to Midnight Club still being effectively dead . After all, it's far from the only Rockstar franchise that got shelved in favor of Grand Theft Auto; the same goes for Bully , L.A. Noire , and even Max Payne , although at least Rockstar has outsourced the remakes of the first two games in that franchise to the original developer (Remedy).

The only other Rockstar franchise that is likely to see a new entry is Red Dead Redemption , thanks to its 115 million units sold to date, 85 million of which were sold by Red Dead Redemption 2 .

As a reminder, Grand Theft Auto VI launches November 19 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X.

About the author : With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.

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