Date change fixes PlayStation 3 bug

Posted on 2 Mar 2010 at 11:19

As we reported yesterday, a bug in older PlayStation 3 models left millions of users unable to log on to the console's online service. This caused numerous problems, as content bought online was inaccessible and players couldn't earn in-game Trophies.

As quickly as the issue appeared, however, it has now gone. The bug was caused by a hardware flaw in the internal clock, which erroneously thought that it was a leap year.

A blog post from a spokesperson on the PlayStation Blog said: "We are aware that the internal clock functionality in the PS3 units other than the slim model, recognized the year 2010 as a leap year. Having the internal clock date change from February 29 to March 1 (both GMT), we have verified that the symptoms are now resolved and that users are able to use their PS3 normally. If the time displayed on the XMB is still incorrect, users are able to adjust time settings manually or via the internet."

According to Richard Leadbetter on his Digital foundry blog: "A small ARM Syscon CPU dedicated to menial tasks within the PlayStation 3 was known to have an issue dealing with leap years. The same piece of silicon had a history of causing similar aggravation for mobile devices with the likes of Zune and some Blackberry devices afflicted. In those cases, MSFT and RIMM were on top of the issue. Sony, unfortunately, was not."

So there's no fix from Sony as of yet, withy the problem fixing itself – for the time being at least. More worryingly, it seems that Sony should have been forewarned and forearmed against it. Giving that another potentially wrong leap year is a whole year away, this gives Sony plenty of time to fix the issue. So we await the company's official explanation of what went wrong and whether it will happen again.

Author: Seth Barton

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