Do you still remember Midnight Club? According to an insider, developer Rockstar has completely discontinued the long-running racing game series in order to focus on GTA.
The gaming world is currently eagerly awaiting the release ofGTA 6. Players are licking their lips at the prospect of this open-world treat; the rest of the industry is busily pushing back its November releases, as no one dares to seriously compete with a new GTA.
It’s already considered a certainty that the next installment in the gangster series will be a massive financial success for developer Rockstar. But this success also comes at a price for Rockstar itself. Other promising brands have fallen by the wayside—such as the once-popular console racing game series Midnight Club.
A Rockstar insider recently revealed that the franchise will likely never roll out of the garage again. Kris Roberts worked for several years as a senior designer at Rockstar San Diego. At the time, he not only oversaw the Midnight Club games but later also helped shape the multiplayer mode for the first Red Dead Redemption; so his words certainly carry weight. In aninterview with Insider GamingRoberts has now explained why Rockstar has shelved its racing game franchise.
The fifth installment was already in the works
According to Roberts, the Rockstar team in San Diego was already working on a fifth installment following the 2010 release ofMidnight Club: Los Angeles. The developers were testing out new locations and even designed a playable prototype of the British metropolis of London. But then Rockstar’s executive team in New York pulled the plug.
The main reason?Midnight Club simply didn’t have the star power of a Grand Theft Auto. Roberts does admit that the studio missed a few deadlines while developing the last Midnight Club, which caused tension with company management. But the real problem lay in the astronomical expectations of publisher Take-Two:
We had the impression that we never received the recognition or acclaim we deserved. From New York’s perspective, it was always just: “You’re not GTA.” We were, in a sense, the unloved stepchild. We did good work; we were world-class, but we were still treated as inferior. That was tough.
— Kris Roberts
Yet Midnight Club was riding a small wave of success at the time. Roberts emphasizes that the series actually kept its players glued to the screen significantly longer than the racing game heavyweights of the day, Need for Speed and Burnout. In the end, however, a loyal community wasn’t enough for executive management—they wanted to see sales above all else.
All for GTA and Red Dead
After Midnight Club 5 was canceled, Rockstar largely disbanded the development team in San Diego. “When they shut it down, it was pretty clear that there wouldn’t be any more Midnight Club and that everything would be focused solely on GTA from then on,” Roberts says, summarizing the mood at the time.
Some employees had to leave the studio, while others moved to the development department for the in-house Rage Engine or helped finish Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar continues to rigorously pursue this blockbuster strategy to this day. Smaller, more experimental titles like *Bully*, *L.A. Noire*, or even a new *Midnight Club* simply no longer fit into the studio’s lineup, which is set to present *GTA 6* to us in November.
