So, the Playstation is experiencing a glitch of extraordinary magnitudes... I've never seen anything like this on any console.
It's probably just a 24 hour bug, but you'll want to leave your glitchy PS3s off in the meantime, just in case, says Sony.
In an update posted to the company's international Twitter feeds and official PlayStation blogs at roughly 9:15am PT, Sony wrote that it hopes to resolve an issue preventing gamers from playing games or connecting to its PlayStation Network, but advises that "you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality."
Those "functionality errors" could include properly recording trophies obtained by completing specific goals in games, as well as "not being able to restore certain data," though it's unclear what Sony means by the latter.
The issue, which manifested as clocks turned from February 28 to March 1, affects older "fat" PS3s only ("slims" are unaffected) and manifests as a time reset to 12/31/99 when you power the system on. Attempting to play certain games offline brings up an error message, as does signing into Sony's PlayStation Network.
Some users have also reported that they can't access streaming videos, such as those downloaded from online video rental service Netflix.
Personally, I can't get any of the downloaded games I have on my system to work properly. Games that I have paid full price for function only as demos... that was when we noticed the problem last night. We spent at least 45 minutes trying to get the console to connect to the internet, checking our cable modem, etc. before I finally got on the internet and started reading similar reports from all over the world.
So yeah... craziness. Sony, in typical Japanese fashion, seems to be pretending like nothing is wrong and have been virtually mum for the last 24 hours, updating once or twice via their Twitter channel and that's it... and even when they DO update, it's to tell us stuff like, "Just don't turn it on for 24 hours,"?! Really, guys? That's the best you can do?
It really is ridiculous... for a console that's claiming it's still in the first quarter of its lifespan, the 360 is looking like a better choice every day. If Microsoft starts slapping blu-ray players in those things, the battle's over... even considering the fact that you have to fork over $50 a year for Xbox Live.
This is going to be a costly error for Sony because, until last week, I was one of the many people who's console didn't connect to the internet, so alllllll those users out there with "fat" systems that aren't connected are going to have to start sending them back to Sony for repair, I suppose. What a mess.
