So if you've tried to use your PlayStation 3 over the last day or so, you might have noticed that some games simply aren't booting properly and your system clock might be fully boned. I'm sure you're torn up about the system clock thing. Of course, not being able to use your game machine to play games is a pretty serious issue, so when it started spreading around like wildfire, Sony finally weighed in today with an official statement.
Here's that official statement:
As you may be aware, some customers have been unable to connect to the PlayStation Network today. This problem affects the models other than the new slim PS3.
We believe we have identified that this problem is being caused by a bug in the clock functionality incorporated in the system.
Errors include:
The date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000.
When the user tries to sign in to the PlayStation Network, the following
message appears on the screen; “An error has occurred. You have been
signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)”.
When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears
on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; “Failed to install
trophies. Please exit your game.”
When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the
Internet, the following message appears on the screen; “The current date
and time could not be obtained. (8001050F)”
Users are not able to play back certain rental video downloaded from the
PlayStation Store before the expiration date.
We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, 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.
As mentioned above, please be advised that the new slim PS3 is not affected with this error. We are doing our best to resolve the issue and do apologize for any inconvenience caused.
Some further speculation places all of this mess at the feet of an internal clock that, for some reason, thinks that 2010 is a leap year and is attempting to assign an invalid date to the day... which is busting up everything at the system level, regardless of whether or not you're connected to PSN. Sony's statement that they hope to resolve the problem in the next 24 hours could mean that they're just waiting it out... in which case we should all be fine and back up in like two hours if this whole thing is running on GMT, right?
I'm not necessarily buying that line of thinking, but then, I'm no engineer and Sony hasn't really gotten specific about the issue, which is also impacting reviewer test kits and actual game developer debug stations. The company plans to use its official blog to convey further information about this issue, so if you're waiting for the all clear, keep an eye out over there. We'll be watching, too.
Someone should tabulate all of the time and money lost today due to developers essentially being unable to develop on PS3 hardware right now.