Well, it’s been a crazy weekend for both Sony and fans of the PlayStation 3. As many of you may or may not know at this point, gamers around the globe have been experiencing issues with their PlayStation 3 consoles both online and off and while the problem remains to be fixed as of this posting, Sony responded yesterday with the following statement via the Official US PlayStation Blog:
“We’re aware that many of you are having difficulty connecting to the PlayStation Network this evening. Those of you with “slim” PS3s (the 120/250 GB models) appear to be unaffected.
Know that we have narrowed down the issue and have engineers working to restore service even as you read this. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you, and genuinely appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this.
In the meantime, you may want to follow our Twitter account for the latest updates.”
Well, the latest tweet, issued 11 hours ago as of this posting, reads:
PSN status update (part 2): Readers/followers are confirming that “slim” units (120/250 GB models) are connecting normally.
So, while it appears that “slim” owners might be in the clear, what about the older consoles? Who else out there is having issues? Are your single player, offline games still being affected? Let us (and Sony) know in the comments below. Hopefully this will get resolved soon and we’ll do our best to update this story once things are rectified.
UPDATE: Ok, update time folks…The PlayStation Blog was the source (here) a few hours ago when Sony sent word that they have identified the problem as being caused by a bug in the clock functionality incorporated in the system. In other words, it’s like Y2K, but Y2PLAY instead…
The post lists the known errors and goes on to say that they hope to resolve the problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, Sony warns that “if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.”
Well…crap.
We’ll do our best to keep you posted on new details as they emerge.
UPDATE PART DEUX: According to the Official PlayStation Blog, service has been restored. According to the post, the problem was caused by the PlayStation 3 incorrectly identifying 2010 as a leap year and therefore clicking over to February 29th instead of March 1st. Its unclear if Sony did anything to fix the issue or simply waited twenty-four hours for the problem to correct itself.
i just got Heavy Rain today and im unable to play it because of this problem T_T.
I brought the slim version last year when Uncharted 2 came out. Even with the 320GB HDD that has in it, no problems from my side. Still I was planing to trade the old one soon, and seems this could lower the value of trade.
This is a bad timing for Sony, having Heavy Rain out and MLB The Show 10 coming this week. This sucks for fans of the Sony Camp… did I mention God of War comes in two weeks??? Whoa !!! This is really F*ck Up.
Now go to work Sony!!!!!
I have the launch model(60GB, BC ps2 and 4 card readers) and i live in Norway.
It hit me about 8-9 hours ago, while i where trying for a trophy in Borderlands. Anyway…
Got booted from PSN and my clock reseted to 1/1/2000.
But unlike may other ppl i have seen commenting, i can still play most of my games.
There are only 2 i have that i cant fire up, and that is Heavy Rain and Flower.
And as this is a skip year, i think(hope) it will be alright as soon as we hit march 2.
Y2K on the wrong date, wrong time. But it caught up with us^^ Or Skynet has fulfilled the prophecy and are rising as we speak^^
Anyway, give it 24hours. Let’s hope it’s solves without briking any consoles.
80 gig fat model. Booted up Killzone 2 this morning, got a trophy error and won’t boot the game. Didn’t try anything else…
I got Demon’s Souls the other day here in Europe and I just killed the spider boss when stuff started to fuck up. Now I have to play more MW2
From what I’ve gathered online, the problem has something to do with Trophy Synchronization and March 1st, so any game that is trophy enabled will not be playable until this problem is fixed. It’s a super bizarre issue, but I’m sure it’ll be worked out soon enough.
I´m a brazilian and played Darksiders all afternoon yesterday, but, around 22 (brasilia time) I turned my console up and couldn´t connect to PSN. No more Darksiders and Dante´s Inferno for me. Only my Uncharted 2 is working.
i hope this problem is fixed soon
Someone needs to tell Sony that April Fools day is NEXT month not March 1st. I got a slim so I’m in the clear I guess. I hope its gets fixed asap.
I have the 40 gig early model. Same happend to me here in the Netherlands… clock reset itself and I can’t sign into PSN anymore.
But because I started up Heavy Rain it deleted those trophies from my system because the date and time of those didn’t match. I just hope I synced them yesterday so I can get them back as soon as the network is up again.
The problem lies with the internal clock of the PS3 which, from what I gathered, can’t be altered by software updates. This could potentially turn out bad for a lot of people.
Here is what happened to me yesterday:
Sunday Feb 28 at around 6:30 p.m. my ps3 was acting up. My LBP dynamic theme was not coming on. so i checked the theme category and it read corrupted data. On most of my games that had DLC added on 2 it, it was all gone. I own Heavy Rain and Bayonetta and all of the trophies for it was gone plus it would not even leave the loading screen. Also I tried getting online but it keeps reading the error code 8001050F. Crazy day.
And here I was all stuck up because I had the big, backward compatible model…
my phatstation3 had a couple of issues last night after midnight but nothin serious, but i noticed the clock had changed and i couldn’t get on PSN.
i’m not gonna turn it on until i’ve heard things are back in order (hopefully tomorrow…) fartunately for me however i completed Heavy Rain about 4:30 saturday morning. if anything, me and PS3 need some time part anyway. i just tidied the kitchen! that would have never happened before
Now mine works again. Started borderlands and all my trophys dinged in again when the game loaded. Set my date by the internet and logged on to psn. It’s all good again lads:)
Now im of for some Heavey Rain:)
i got it all the way down in New Zealand.
im praying this fixes itself otherwise it would mean 1 of two things.
everyone with the issue having to send their ps3 back to get fixed or maybe sony sending some kind of CD to everyone effected to fix the problem.
since people cant connect to PSN this wont be able to be solved locally.
I haven’t used my PS3 in a couple of days so I’m still in the clear. I have the old 40 Gig device.
I just hope this doesn’t become SONY’s version of Microsoft’s “Red ring of death” lol
Cheers axe heads
It’s a global problem which has affected all fat PS3′s. It isn’t regional, it’s to do with a so called “dumb” chip in all fat PS3′s which get confused by leap years. The thought 2010 was a leap year and therefore what was actually the 1st March was confused to be the 29th Feb.
It’s not going to turn into a Sony RROD but I’m pretty sure it’ll have affected more PS3′s at once than Xbox’s that’ve been affected by the RROD ever! Be interesting for MS to release those figures but it’s highly unlikely that they would!
- Knight!
Am I the only one that just gets white snow when I turn it on?
EDIT: Lol, big fail from my side… I accidentically switched to TV instead of HDMI…
Wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up on failblog…