Rockstar has not released a new Midnight Club game since Midnight Club: Los Angeles in 2008. Fans have spent years asking whether the street-racing series could return. A former Rockstar designer now says a fifth game did enter early development, but it was stopped before the team could turn its first ideas into a full production.
Kris Roberts, a former senior designer at Rockstar San Diego, told Insider Gaming that the studio had begun testing cities for Midnight Club 5. London was among the locations used for early work. Roberts did not describe a nearly finished game. His account points to prototypes, planning, and internal discussions that ended before Rockstar announced anything to players.
A Fifth Midnight Club Had Already Started
Roberts said the new game was being discussed while Rockstar San Diego was dealing with the final stages of Midnight Club: Los Angeles. According to him, the team wanted to continue the series and had started exploring what another open-city racing game could look like. The London prototype is the clearest example he shared, although it does not mean London had been chosen as the final setting.
The project reportedly ran into problems inside Rockstar. Roberts described disagreements between the San Diego studio and Rockstar's leadership in New York, including arguments about creative control and the direction of the series. He also said missed deadlines on Midnight Club: Los Angeles hurt confidence in the team. Rockstar and Take-Two have not confirmed his version of events.
Midnight Club was important because it gave Rockstar a racing series that felt different from Grand Theft Auto. Players could move freely through cities, customize vehicles, challenge rivals, and race through traffic without being locked to traditional circuits. Midnight Club: Los Angeles is still sold through the Xbox store, but backward compatibility is not the same as a new entry.
The series also arrived before open-world racing became crowded. Need for Speed had street racing and police chases, while Burnout focused on speed and crashes. Midnight Club let players learn a real city's road layout and choose their own route to the finish. That freedom gave it an audience that still asks for a return almost two decades later.
Why Rockstar Stopped the Project
Roberts believes comparisons with Grand Theft Auto also worked against Midnight Club 5. GTA could offer driving, crime, story missions, and a much larger audience inside one release. A separate racing game had to justify its budget beside Rockstar's biggest property. His comments suggest that Midnight Club was expected to compete for attention and resources with GTA, even though the two series served different players.
That does not prove GTA was the only reason the project ended. Roberts also named deadlines, management conflict, and different ideas about who should control development. IGN's report presents the GTA comparison as part of his explanation, not an official statement from Rockstar. Until the company comments, this remains one former employee's account of a canceled project.
Rockstar has revived older names before, but there is no public sign that Midnight Club is active today. A modern game would also face a different market, with Forza Horizon, The Crew Motorfest, and several Need for Speed releases already offering open-world driving. The name still has value, but nostalgia alone would not remove the cost and pressure Roberts described.
For fans, the painful detail is that the series was not simply forgotten after 2008. People inside Rockstar were thinking about another game and had begun testing ideas. The project still did not survive the company's priorities at the time. There is no current announcement for Midnight Club 5, a remaster, or a reboot.
The report gives fans history, not a new release plan. Early prototypes are common in game development, and many never reach the public. Roberts' account helps explain why this one disappeared, but it does not show that Rockstar is preparing to use the work now. Any new project would need a fresh announcement from Rockstar or Take-Two.
Rockstar is now focused on Grand Theft Auto VI. Pixel Twelve's GTA timeline and GTA 6 preorder and price guide cover what the company has actually confirmed. Midnight Club fans have a clearer explanation for what happened years ago, but they are still waiting for Rockstar to say what comes next.
