Passage of Time Solves PS3 Glitch

An anonymous reader writes "A quick update on the widespread PlayStation 3 glitch we discussed recently: as of last night (Monday, March 1st) the problem has resolved itself. I powered up my PS3 to find the clock was set to April 29th, 2020, but once I went into the system menu and set the date and time via the internet I got an accurate date. That seems to be the test of whether your PS3 is 'fixed' or not; Sony says you should be all set."

Comments

Sony's Official Announcement

[eldavojohn]

Here is the official press release I received in an e-mail this morning:

First Quadrennial Childhood Obesity Awareness Day Goes Off Without a Hitch!

We'd like to thank all our gamers for observing our compulsory First Quadrennial Childhood Obesity Awareness Day that we had planned many years in advance back when we made our first consoles. We hope all the children took the time to get outside and exercise. As always, Sony endorses moderation in game play and we feel that this surprise holiday away from the Playstation Network will help today's youth become more healthy and social.

Should we decide to surprise you with a second Quadrennial Childhood Obesity Awareness Day, it could happen March 1st of 2012. See you in 2012 (maybe)! Until then, remember to get plenty of fresh air and exercise!

Totally in control of the situation,

Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf
Chief Sony Public Think of the Children Relations Officer

Re:I can't wait for April Fool's Day...

[Mongoose Disciple]

Is SONY going to make my PS3 explode?

No, but every twenty minutes a kitten will come out.

That'll be fixed in the next update though.

So what were they supposed to do?

[Dr. Manhattan]

I'd love to hear an explanation from Sony about how, exactly, they managed to have this bug exist in the first place.

Well, apparently, it wasn't a Sony bug per se, it was a bug in one of the support chips.

Sony decided to be paranoid about time because of pirates. If you can hack the PS3 and change the date, then you can avoid expiration times and so forth. So if the hardware clock and software clock get out of sync, their DRM and such stops working. Considering the PS3 is the only major console that has not been hacked to the point of widespread piracy, keeping to this level of paranoia seems to have paid off for Sony's purposes.

As to Sony's "piss-poor handling of the entire incident", I'd like to know what, exactly, you think they should have done about it?

Seriously, I've just appointed you, _xeno_, to be CEO of Sony, and you just got a phone call. "Oh, crap, it's midnight GMT on March 1st, 2010, and all the older PS3 consoles can't play downloaded content or games with trophies or sign into the PSN!". What are you going to do? What orders do you give?