Fortunately, working with Angel turned out to be a great move for Rockstar, as the original Midnight Club was a success and reviewed generally quite well. It wasn’t perfect, and suffered from a lot of the growing pains that games were going through at the beginning of this era, but overall Rockstar was pleased enough with the game, as its mix of realistic graphics, somewhat dark tone and arcade-y, almost Crazy Taxi-style of gameplay proved to be more than enough to sell well and please racing fans. Unsurprisingly, a follow-up was released soon after, and Midnight Club 2 did exactly what it needed to do buy improving on nearly every aspect of the game. The characters were more numerous and more fleshed out, the world was bigger, the graphics were a little better, and the diving felt much tighter as the handbrake didn’t need to be used as often and usually just served as a way to initiate drifts with small taps, which was a noticeable improvement over the way it was handled in the original. Also, the arrow at the top of the screen was a little less useless.

Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition improved even more on the same elements, although, maybe was slightly less of a jump than 2 was from 1. Nevertheless the series had reached Need For Speed levels of notoriety by now, and had amassed a rather large fan-base due to the series now having great versions available on the Xbox and PlayStation Portable. The series simmered for just a little while, and soon after the next generation of consoles were launched, Midnight Club Los Angeles was released to the delight of many old and new fans alike. As with the previous games, the new Midnight Club improved on all elements, reviewed well, and even added in some good customization options.

A lot of the goofy-nature of the original games was nowhere to be seen however, and some might say that loss of identity dragged it down a  tad, but it was impossible to ignore what a polished, fun, open-world racing game Midnight Club LA was. Despite some complaints about some changes to the controls, racing fans still enjoyed this entry to the series and eagerly awaited the next. Trouble was, that next entry never came. Ten years later, and we still don’t have as much as a peep from Rockstar about a new Midnight Club. By why not? Why would a series that had been recieved so well and improved so steadily with each entry just suddenly evaporate? What the hell happened to Midnight Club?

Unlike when a lot of other franchises die off, the death of Midnight Club is not very clear cut and a definite cause is elusive. However, rumors of rough working conditions that include 12 hour days and workweeks that often spill into the weekend at Rockstar San Diego were at an all-time high soon after the launch of the Midnight Club LA. Many posts have been made on various websites and forums by people who claim to be disgruntled employees, former employees that cite many quality of life issues in the work environment, shrinking benefits and wasteful spending by the management in unnecessary areas.

I won’t go into too much detail on those, as they have been available for years and they are easy to find, but one post relevant to our topic at hand mentions that the Midnight Club team was mysteriously dismantled and employees who were not fired or quit were reallocated to other projects. This is of course unconfirmed by Rockstar, but the claim does line up with the fact that since these rumors broke, we haven’t seen any signs of a new Midnight Club game. So, if there is any truth to the claims of anonymous posters online who purport to be former and current employees of Rockstar, this could very well be what happened to Rockstar. And even though we can’t believe it definitively, if it is true, it would make sense for Rockstar to not comment, as they have refused to do in any meaningful way.

Regardless of the status of internal practices at Rockstar, they wouldn’t be the only publisher to ignore a successful franchise for a long time. Development is complicated these days as there are lots of careers and capital on the line with each and every major release, especially with wildly successful publishers like Rockstar, who now find themselves with lots of powerful shareholders. No matter how much we may want a new Midnight Club, the fact remains that it’s still very hard to get a bunch of empty suits in a boardroom convinced to support an arcade racing game over another sequel to a franchise that is a guaranteed slam dunk like Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead. Lots of people love Midnight Club, but I can understand why if somebody is simply looking at spreadsheets they might decide its better to dump resources into something else. Perhaps they could learn a lesson from the genius that is the funding model of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, where a developer gave a small yet extremely talented and motivated team just enough resources to get it done, but not a penny more, and also gave them more freedom, thusly ensuring a good game and creative freedom while also minimizing risk.

Despite all that bad news, It’s possible that the series could be returning, as some small signs of hope have made their way on to the internet in the form of screenshots of a very modern-looking Midnight Club game with Xbox One button prompts being displayed. These screenshots surfaced on reddit over a year ago, and it appeared to resemble an alpha-stage of development, so if this is real, then the game is probably more than a few years in development and we could be closer to a new Midnight Club than we realize, but like most things we think we know about the status of this franchise, take it with a grain of salt. With all of the capital and goodwill Rockstar has generated in recent years, the time could be right for a new Midnight Club game as they could more than sustain the risk at this point, so while I wouldn’t suggest to start revving your engines just yet, I would say to keep your eyes open, as a new entry in this series could very well be right around the corner. 

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

It looks like Rockstar may be working on bringing back the beloved cult classic Midnight Club series back- at least if eagle eyed Reddit user Derik2502 is to be believed. In an exhaustive Reddit post, he has gone ahead and posted evidence of Rockstar Game developers who were testing the remaster on their Social Club accounts, as well as profiles and screenshots off of Xbox Live.

You can see all the screenshots for yourself below, although most of the actual links are dead. However,  the evidence seems to be rather conclusive. If so, then we can all probably expect a Midnight Club Remaster to be announced some time soon. And we can be assured it is definitely coming to the Xbox One, if nothing else.

Midnight Club launched in 2000 for PS2 and GBA; subsequent followups came to PC, PSP, PS3, Xbox, and Xbox 360, but the series has lain dormant for a while now. News of this remaster will doubtless be greeted with exultation by series fans.

Rockstar have seen tremendous success with Grand Theft Auto V. The game has shipped 45 million units till date and with the PC launch happening next month, that number could very well surpass 50 million. Given the game’s massive success, it’s only obvious that Rockstar will follow up with Grand Theft Auto 6 or may be a sequel to Red Dead Redemption.

But Wedbush Securities’ Michael Pachter disagrees. He believes that Rockstar are motivated by developing experiences for the player and not by money. So instead of announcing a sequel, they will most likely announce a new IP.

“I don’t think the sequel to Red Dead Redemption is the next Rockstar game. Remember when I said there was some new IP that they’ve been working on since at least ‘09? I think that comes before Red Dead Revolution. I think a sequel to Midnight Club comes before Red Dead Revolution, and it wouldn’t shock me if a sequel to Manhunt came before Bully or Red Dead.”

“I think Rockstar has a really amazing number of great games and great IPs, and I don’t think that Rockstar are motivated by money. I think Rockstar are motivated by high quality game experiences. And I don’t think that they’re willing to abandon those other brands in order to generate higher sales for their parent company. I think that they want to keep all those brands alive. So I think before Red Dead Revolution you will get Midnight Club sequel and a new IP.”

“And remember, Rockstar has launched a game every single year since 2001, if you count Grand Theft Auto V on next gen as a game. I don’t know if we should count Grand Theft Auto V as a game or not on next gen. Otherwise they’ve missed one. They’re working on a lot of projects, they get one game a year out.”

“There is no chance that they would have gotten into February of ‘15 without announcing the next Red Dead. I mean, they announced the next Grand Theft Auto on November 1st, 2011. Remember? And it came out on  September 17th, 2013, so almost two years later. I think you’ll hear about Red Dead at least a year ahead of time. So if you hear about it this summer, it’s coming out next year. Maybe. But we haven’t heard about it yet. I think they could get away with not announcing Midnight Club, or Bully, on Manhunt 3 or whatever until E3, and I frankly think that the reason we haven’t heard about the new IP is because it’s a new IP.”

Michael Pachter predicts that Rockstar will announce the new IP closer to E3 in their own event to garner attention.

“I think that the brand new IP that Rockstar has been working on since ‘09 will be announced this year. Rockstar tends to not go to E3, so they’ll probably have their own event in May or something. Knowing them, they’ll probably have it during E3 in another city just to draw attention. But I think it’s a new IP this year. I don’t think it’s Red Dead, so no, I think that’s naive of people to believe that the Rockstar are going to follow the success of GTA V with more GTA.”

Given that Rockstar’s major game for 2015 seems to be Grand Theft Auto 5 on PC, I’d say there is a fair chance that we may see Rockstar announce a new game later this year. Personally, I would take a sequel to Red Dead Redemption anytime but a new IP by by Rockstar sounds intriguing.

We will make sure to keep you update on what Rockstar is up to as the year rolls out.