Tech Blog

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For the past 24 hours as many as 20 million PS3 machines around the world have been affected by an internal clock bug that caused a number of errors, including the dreaded inability to play games.  The timing couldn't have been worse as Sony's recently released Heavy Rain, one of the most anticipated PS3 exclusives this year, was one of the games rendered unplayable by the glitch.  Since the bug was first identified on Sunday at midnight (GMT), thousands of panicked gamers flooded forums such as NeoGAF complaining of widespread software failure problems and no access to the PlayStation Network. 

Fortunately, it looks like Sony has found a remedy to the crippling hardware problem.  Word from the PlayStation Blog is that the internal clock bug has been squashed and access to the PlayStation Network has been restored.  It appears the source of the problem was that the clock on older models (colloquially known as PS3 "Phats") recognized 2010 as a leap year.  At the stroke of midnight on February 28, the internal clock date changed to February 29 (both GMT), a date incompatible with the PlayStation Network, and as a result the affected PS3 clocks were reset to Dec. 31, 1999.  Having the internal clock change from February 29 to March 1 seems to have resolved this date conflict and restored the PS3s to their normal state. 

Aside from the date glitch, other errors identified by Sony and PS3 users included:

- Attempts to access the PlayStation Network resulted in the following message on-screen; "An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)".

- Downloaded games from the PlayStation Network, such as Flower, Fat Princess and Bomberman Ultra failed to launch, as well as DLC such as the recent Borderlands: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx.  (the thinking is that DRM conflicts relating to the clock issues caused these errors.)

- When retail games including Heavy Rain, White Knight Chronicles, and Final Fantasy XIII were loading, the following error message appeared on the screen and the trophy data may have disappeared; "Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game."

- When a user tried 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 were not able to play back certain rental video downloaded from the PlayStation Store before the expiration date.

- Dynamic desktop themes failed to load

With such a large number of PS3 consoles affected by these errors the Twitterverse was instantly ablaze with disgruntled gamers frustrated at their inability to play their favourite video games.  The twitters jokingly dubbed the bug "ApocalyPS3" and soon many parodies started springing up on gaming forums and blogs such as "I Survived The ApocalPS3", "Kevin Butler: VP, 8001050F Error Relations", "2006-1999", and "ApocalyPS3 Now". 

To Sony's credit, they handled the meltdown very well, using both the PlayStation Blog and the PlayStation twitter account to update patient customers.  Not long after the bug was discovered Sony officials tweeted that the company was "looking into the issue" and that updates would soon follow.  Frequent updates throughout the day were posted, first letting gamers know the bug was not affecting newer PS3 "Slim" models, and later that their engineers had identified the source of the problem and were working on a fix.  While the lockout incident is quite unfortunate, I think Sony should be commended for such quick updates and for remedying the situation in a reasonable amount of time. 

The fix should take effect immediately, however if your PS3's internal clock is still incorrect, Patrick Seybold, senior director, corporate communications has the following advice:

"If the time displayed on the XMB is still incorrect, users are able to adjust time settings manually or via the internet."

If you're a gamer that launched a trophy-enabled game and saw your list of trophies suddenly disappear you may be able to salvage them.  I had my entire SingStar trophy collection vanish on me, but after loading the game tonight it automatically recreated the trophy data set on my PS3's memory, and once I synced with the PSN server my trophies all returned.

Hopefully everyone is up and running again, but in the odd event that your PS3 still isn't functioning properly keep your eyes peeled for updates on the PlayStation.Blog or PlayStation.com.