DRM News

UPDATE 3 : And from Sony, confirmation that the problems seems to have been fixed. The internal clock on older PS3 units did indeed think that it was a leap year (2000), thus causing the system to go nuts. As the clock ‘rolls over’ to the right date, the issue is fixed. As well, if the displayed time is still wrong, it can be updated manually or via PSN (access to which is also restored).

UPDATE 2 : From Gamasutra :

Sony says the widespread PlayStation 3 outages users have suffered since last night are due to a bug in the system’s clock functionality, and that the company is working to fix the issue within the next 24 hours.

Older versions of the PS3 have had their clocks reset to a date of Jan 1, 2000. PSN has become inaccessible for many users of the older PS3, Trophy achievements have been wiped out, and games will flat out refuse to run. Hopefully, the problem is fixed soon.

In the meantime, Sony is urging all owners of the old PS3 systems to not turn them on.

UPDATE : It seems that the problems are confirmed to be limited to older models of the PS3, not the newer ‘slim’ model. Also, the bug is apparently related to the system calendar date.

Sony’s Playstation Network is experiencing a myriad number of game crashing errors at the moment. The problems go beyond that, however, with corrupted Trophy information and and a lack of PSN access.

Beyond that, however, some PS3 owners are unable to launch ANY disc based games, including those with no online component whatsoever.  Included in that list of titles is PS3 exclusive heavy hitter Heavy Rain, which just launched this past week. Most of these problems seem to be affecting older PS3 models much more than the new ‘slim’ version.

As reported by Joystiq, Sony is reported to be ‘looking in to the problem’. Bizarrely, it seems that unplugging your PS3 from the Internet will NOT fix the problem if you’re having one, seeming to point towards this being some sort of system issue beyond simple network problems.If that isn’t the case, why is a network problem rendering any and all games unplayable for some users?