The image above is what greeted me after a long weekend of manual labor. I sat down in front of the PS3 ready to give Heavy Rain another shot. The system couldn't connect to the network, which was odd since it was working elsewhere in the house. No big deal, I didn't need to be online. Started Heavy Rain. Registration, trophy, game will quit...WTF?!
I was just talking about my frustrations with Heavy Rain, so I immediately thought something else was wrong with it. Took it out, put it back in, restarted the system without the network cable and ended up with the same result. Really?! I can't play the game at all? That's when I noticed system time was off: 12/31/1999. Well, I wasn't using the network to set the time. Maybe it was just off. It was worth looking up the error code online.
Boom! Tons of hits right away. I hopped over to NeoGAF and really got a sense of scale on the situation. Global meltdown. Nearly every non-slim PS3 in the world was unable to play games or connect to the Playstation Network. Wow.
The GAF think tank has some pretty good theories since we aren't hearing anything substantial from Sony yet. Today is March 1st, and the operating system may have made a mistake and assumed this was a leap year. If it went to the calendar to set the date to 2/29/2010, that date would not be found. It appears this all started around midnight GMT as well, which lends to a calendar/date bug.
Just how is Sony going to resolve this though, if it doesn't fix itself (which doesn't look likely)? Once they fix things on their side, will we be able to reconnect to the PSN to get a firmware fix? Will this even be fixable by firmware? What about people with no network connection to their PS3? Mail out discs with a firmware update? Is that possible? Jim suggested that we should all be sent new PS3 slims, and I've heard that seconded by many of my friends as well. It seems a fair solution :) Lots of questions to be answered and the only word out of Sony so far is that they are aware of the problem.
This is a pretty monstrous event if you ask me. Will be back with updates as they occur.
Update already: Sony has spoken up on their Playstation Blog. So, the problem is as suspected. Don't turn on your system...too late for that. Problem should be resolved within 24 hours, but no mention on how easy rolling out the fix will be. Looks like people who turned on their system could be looking at some data loss or corruption, not good.
Update 2: It looks like Sony worked real hard *wink* to get those system working again at exactly 24 hours, *cough* fixeditself *cough*
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The only reason I say that it's good this has happened is because those that said the PS3 is not subject to the same problems the 360 had with the rings of death were right.
ReplyDeleteBut they got it in a different form. Engineering, whether it be electrical or software, is always prone to human error, and as long as humans are building the gaming systems/computers, there will always be room for error with every piece of electronics or software.
No one's safe.