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Playstation parties like it's 1999, falls over and forgets date

2 March 2010
By Paul Smith

Bitterwallet - PS3According to the media, yesterday marked the end of the world for Playstation 3 owners. An unknown error meant players couldn't connect to the Playstation Network and, depending on what you read, wiped play data from thousands of consoles, causing many a thumb-twiddling mummy's boy to break down to floods of tears (it didn't really though, did it?).

To their credit, Sony didn't shy away from the issue - by yesterday evening, they'd pretty much carpet-bombed blogs and major news outlets with official information, while instructing users to step away from their PS3s (the older versions at least, not the PS3 Slim) until the issue was rectified.

What was the issue? The Millennium Bug! Sort of. Well, not really:

"We are aware that the internal clock functionality in the PS3 units other than the slim model, recognized the year 2010 as a leap year. Having the internal clock date change from February 29th to March 1st (both GMT), we have verified that the symptoms are now resolved and that users are able to use their PS3 normally. If the time displayed on the XMB is still incorrect, users are able to adjust time settings manually or via the internet."

It's all fixed now - hooray! Out of interest, if you're a PS3 owner, how much disruption did the bug cause you? Reading the papers you'd think the world had been consumed by locusts. Did Sony catch the problem in time for most of you?

15 comments

  • RazorD
    Heres the problem. Sony did bugger all. They updated twice without actually telling us the fault, despite it being reasonably obvious! They'd of been better off saying "Oh. yeh. it'll fix itself at midnight" Coupled with the fact Sony UK were telling completely false information to the mainstream media, it was just a complete mess. Lets hope sony learn how to handle these things better in future.
    Reply ·
  • Paul S.
    Oh dear. I could see them being pro-active, didn't realise the information wasn't helpful. What sort of information was misleading?
    Reply ·
  • M4RKM
    well I was going to have a mess about on that Heavy Rain game I bought.. but instead caught up on the 24 action I've been missing.. Thankfully, my life doesn't revolve around a PS3... M
    Reply ·
  • Randomhero
    Suddenly paying £40 a year for Xbox live doesn't seem that bad.
    Reply ·
  • Lumoruk
    Paul why the fuck have I been suspended from hukd for 5 days, it's not my fault your board couldn't cope with :::)::: in the title. I posted it once to test and then for some reason it posted twice, it was an accident so now I get no warning just suspended for 5 days bit extreme don't you think? hissy fit over.
    Reply ·
  • me
    :::):::
    Reply ·
  • Monster
    @ Randomhero - shame Xbox's are gash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems
    Reply ·
  • CompactDistance
    Paul, it took 12-odd hours after commenting that Slims worked for Sony to issue any kind of update, and then any statement that came out the other side of their lawyers made it look like they thought it was a network error... then they said they hoped to have it resolved within 24 hours... oh you mean you're going to sit tight and wait for midnight, lol.
    Reply ·
  • Aidan
    As well as a PS3 I have a job and something resembling a life so this was the first I had heard of it...panic over.
    Reply ·
  • blueboy
    @Randomhero, £40 for 365 days a year instead of the £0 I pay for my 364 days a year? @Aidan, but have you ever kissed a girl? Surely that is against McDonalds employee regulations!?!
    Reply ·
  • dunfyboy
    Sony did fuck all. The bug's still there so it could happen again. It wasn't the fact that it happened that pissed me off, it was the fact Sony issued a blub about 1am saying there was a problem logging into PSN (without saying owners couldn't even play games offline) then nothing till about 6pm saying they were working on a fix (when all the time they were just praying they all reset themselves at midnight). Major comms failure from Sony.
    Reply ·
  • Warwick H.
    Bit like Toyota then, say nowt and hope nobody notices.
    Reply ·
  • -]
    Same leap year bug that hit the microsoft zune a few years ago. A shame that it happened, but hardly the end of the world - at least you could still play games. http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/31/30gb-zunes-mysteriously-begin-to-fail-at-12am-december-31st/
    Reply ·
  • dunfyboy
    No you couldn't. Even offline play was affected.
    Reply ·
  • -]
    I was playing offline on my phat whilst psn was down. I also used the browser to quickly check something. Possibly some games were affected, and that is shit - I expect games to work without a net connection. Although it's probably more to do with the game checking system date.
    Reply ·

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