boxcar

@ishatonu

Except that it will be fixed. At approximately 6:00pm Central Time (3-2-10 12:00AM GMT). This is almost certain, as anyone who has hard reset the RTC by removing the battery for ten minutes has their console up and running. The problem is that Sony used an off the shelf Real Time Clock (the clock that keeps the real world time current) in the earlier units. These RTCs have a programming error which makes them think that this year is a leap year, which would make today 2-29-10. When this date gets sent to the PS3 OS, the OS says "Hey, that's not a valid date!" because Sony actually programmed their OS correctly. Unfortunately, this invalid date, because it doesn't exist (not because it's the wrong date), is causing the OS to set the date to 1/1/2000. Likely something is happening where the trophy code has a date check that says "trophies go live on xx/xx/xxxx, if the current date is before this, don't work properly". If the server you're supposed to sync trophies to doesn't exist yet (like the PS3 likely thinks), why bother trying to sync to it, just throw up an error.

At least, that's what the interwebs have been saying is the likely problem.

BTW, the OS is setting the date to 1/1/2000, but that's Greenwich Mean Time. US is GMT -5 to -10 or so, which is the reason your console likely says 12/31/1999.

Lets just assume that that last post showed up where it was supposed to, and was @Solace. Comment system ftw.

No, no, you misunderstand me. I wouldn't be playing my PS3 for at least another 6 or 7 hours, as I have a life and things which I must do during the day. This is not the issue.

The issue comes from the fact that Sony should know their fanbase. Sony should realize that, for every irrationally angry fanboy here on Joystiq, or on Sony's own blog, for that matter, there are 100 more people that own their console and haven't been able to use it for over 12 hours now, and are experiencing a range of emotions, from "meh" to "huh, that sucks" to "I'm crazy and entering PS3 withdrawl, Sony owes me a thousand shares of stock for this!"

It is ludicrous, then, that they would simply say "we're working on it" and then not give anyone any updates. And, it is a terrible PR move; one that the folks in their PR department really should know not to make. The goal of PR is to make good things look better and bad things look good. This, from a PR standpoint, is a pretty big (not quite EPIC yet) FAIL.

I understand the service being down. I even understand unforeseen issues with the firmware handling leap years. I guess I can kind of understand the firmware having weird issues with years that aren't leap years... though that's pretty odd.

However, what I can't understand, and have a really hard time accepting, is that Sony hasn't given us any kind of update in 11 hours. This is a HUGE screw-up on the part of Sony's PR department. It's pretty obvious that people are pissed about this. From previous comments it even seems that someone's entire HDD is corrupted, and Sony has NOTHING TO SAY. Millions of users can't use their PS3s (which a good chunk of them paid $500-600 for) at all, and it's because of a mistake on Sony's part.

If they're working on a solution, they ought to be updating the world every hour or two, at the least. If they don't know what solution to be looking for, they ought to let us know that and continue to keep us updated. You have a Twitter account for a reason! Use it!

You thought $500 was a reasonable pricepoint to launch at, and ended up only selling to your loyal fans. We are loyal for a reason. You earned our trust with the PS2, easily the greatest console of the previous generation. By keeping us (the loyal) in the dark, you test our loyalty and will likely lose a number of us in the process.

I'm good with a reboot. Hell, we rebooted the Hulk after six years and ONE movie, and the reboot worked out a hell of a lot better for me than the Ang Lee version.

While I was a big fan of Raimi, Toby just irked me through all three films. Dafoe and Molina were amazing in their villain roles, but I was never really comfortable with James Franco as Harry. And really, did we need Thomas Hayden Church? And MJ was the only role I've ever liked Kirsten Dunst in.

The point of that little rant was that the casting was pretty half-assed all around. I used to think that it was stupid that every Batman film had someone new starring, but now that I look back, as much as each one sucked more than the previous (Begins and DK obviously excluded), the new batman every time kept thins kind of fresh.

I think we should institute a rule that comic book franchises need to be rebooted every 7-10 years. It allows for the more popular villains to be reused, and prevents the franchises from having to either come up with brand new storylines or delve too far into the mythology of the actual comic for your average viewer to understand what's going on.

And really, when it comes down to it, I loved both Nicholson and Ledger as the Joker, but for entirely different reasons. And anyone who didn't like Nicholson was probably happy they got so see Ledger's performance. And anyone who didn't like Ledger's Joker doesn't understand movies in general, and probably has trouble walking and looking at things at the same time.

Calling myself Harold, I'd call it Purple Crayon, and proceed to forever alter the meaning of the beloved children's book.

Totally agreed. Missleblizzard ftw!

N N IIIIIIIIII CCCCC EEEEEEE
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Am I a dork? Yes. But I also want all those games.

Nice...ish.