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Calendar Bug Disables Older PlayStation 3 Models
JohnWilliams writes "The Sony PlayStation Network appears to be inaccessible to older ('phat') PS3 units. Players cannot play games that require a connection, even in single-player, offline mode, e.g. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Also, the system date resets to January 1, 2000. Sony is 'looking into it.' Speculation abounds that it is a bug related to 2010 being incorrectly flagged as a leap year. The newer PS3 Slim models seem to be working properly."
On my UK PS3, the date was reset to 31/12/1999 (a value you cannot input yourself manually) and then rolled over into 2000 some hours (5?) later.
None of my downloaded PS1 games will start - just gives an "invalid copyright protection" error message.
With the exception of Wipeout HD, none of my downloaded PS3 games will start.
None of my Blu-ray game disks will start.
My PlayTV device is not performing scheduled recordings
VidZone cannot be used, since it requires signing into PSN network to determine what region you're from
Oh, man, the party is at Balmer's house tonight.
It happened because two different time tracking systems disagreed with each other and were stupid. System 1 said "It's February 29th, 2010", and passed it to System 2. System 2 says "WHOA, that's impossible, nuke it from orbit and start over". Why did they do it like that? Who knows?
When I said the Millennium Bug would strike again, you all thought I was crazy! Who's laughing now?
\x72\x6D\x20\x2D\x72\x66
So you're saying it's ok for me to be locked out of my games because Sony's servers don't feel like giving out achievements at this time.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
While people are far too quick to yell "sue" needlessly, it is a legitimate complaint that otherwise offline, single-player games should be unusable due to this glitch. Whatever happened to gracefully handling failure? A network connection has no business being a requirement (to the point of failing to play without it) for a single player game.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
If this a hardware/firmware issue, then I hope to god for Sony's sake that there's a quick and easy fix that users can apply at home. The problem is that even if they offer everybody a free trade-in to a PS3 slim (which would be cripplingly expensive), then a lot of users, self included, won't accept this. Trading from an original 60 gig PS3 to a PS3 slim is not an upgrade. It's a downgrade.
Why? Because the original first-gen PS3s had full PS2 back-compatibility, while the more recent versions don't. People like me, who got rid of their PS2 when they picked up a PS3, are not going to be happy in the slightest if it turns out we need to start hitting Ebay for PS2s.
The only reason I can see a video game not working because of mis-matched dates is because of DRM,
Well, if that's the only reason you can think of, you're not thinking very hard, are you?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I understand your explanation of the bug, I'm just arguing that a game shouldn't be crippled by a simple bug that should be trivial to game avaialability offline. I'm just saying a game shouldn't be crippled by the system date. And the only reason I can think of why someone would want the date sync'd or the game made non-working due to changed system date was because of some form of DRM.
Maybe I'm wrong but this is the only reason I can think of. I just can't find it easy to accept their explanation for this, that's all.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I view this a bit differently. If the drive-door fell off or the gears on the tray broke I would't suggest suing.
However, if your fridge doors locked and prevented you from using it each time you set the date wrong on the fridge, yes I would suggest suing.
I am not mad at the PS3 breaking, I am mad at the fact that rather trivial issues prevent people from playing fully functioning games on a fully functioning console system.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It was refusing to install the Star Ocean Trophy set. I could get it to start Bayonetta, but when it attempted to load the first cutscene it just hung forever. Tried doing a number of things, nothing worked... And it wouldn't let me back up my data as the largest thumbdrive I own is 8gb and after removing ALL game data, installed demos and everything else I could strip, it claimed it still needed another 750mb of space (original claim was over 17gb). And of course it refuses to recognize either of my external USB HDDs as a target for backing up or reading data from...
So I started thinking "HD Failing" (it is an original PS3 after all). Figured I'd have it format the drive then reinstall and repatch my games. Nearly a 5 hour time estimate. Take a nap, wake up, see this.... "oh god damnit."
It is not a bug, it is the Sony timer.
No, the reason you shouldn't sue is that suing someone because they pissed you off makes you an asshat.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Give the guy a break, he could just be stupid.
Or he could be following the longstanding tradition of not knowing what the hell you're talking about when bitching on the Internet.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
We talk to each other. We try to come to an agreement. If that fails a third party might get involved, especially if it's a disagreement between a company and an individual customer.
And once all those options have been exhausted...then we might bring in an actual lawyer.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
No, DRM is and has always been about killing 2nd hand sales. The piracy non-issue was just an excuse that no one would question whilst they went about removing your consumer rights. For over a year now publishers have been openly equating the 2nd hand market to piracy. The ultimate goal is to destroy all media they don't control, if DRM isn't stopped in the near future all games will require an authorised console, with authorised media, on an authorised display device and an authorised user and if any of these things fail authorisation then the whole system will stop working (for you at least).
/.ers are in the US) about DRM.
So at least write to your representative (I know in the US this will do nothing but not all
I've said it before and I'll say it again, consoles have DRM built into the hardware. This makes it both more prevalent and more aggressive then DRM on the PC. It also makes it harder to remove.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Ayn Rand is not exactly a good source for economic insight.
To me, as an individual, a cease-and-desist doen't feel like you're trying to talk to me, it feels like you're trying to bully me. If you're trying to talk to me, give me a call or send me an informal email, from one human being to another.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Lucky for me I read up on this before using my PS3 at all today. I seem to have circumvented the issue to a degree. I unplugged the power my wireless router and then fired up my PS3. From there, I noticed my date/time was set to 12/31/2000. In the system settings, I disabled internet connection and reset the time manually to 3/1/2010. Now that internet was disabled, I plugged my router back in. I tested a few games, and all worked. Granted, this does not solve the issue of trophies and getting into PSN, but at least I can play single player games until they come up with a fix.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO