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Bug PlayStation (Games) Sony Games

Calendar Bug Disables Older PlayStation 3 Models 342

Posted by Soulskill from the probably-just-ubisoft-drm-kicking-in dept.
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."
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Calendar Bug Disables Older PlayStation 3 Models More

Calendar Bug Disables Older PlayStation 3 Models

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  • Complete and utter Sony DRM failure (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 01, 2010 @05:20AM (#31313396)

    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

  • Microsoft has to love this (Score:5, Funny)

    by tsotha ( 720379 ) on Monday March 01, 2010 @05:24AM (#31313418)
    Oh, man, the party is at Balmer's house tonight.

  • 9's (Score:2)

    by toastar ( 573882 )

    well sony just blew there 3 nines rating. :(

  • I Told You All! (Score:5, Funny)

    by sysusr ( 971503 ) <sysusr@linuxmDEBIANail.org minus distro> on Monday March 01, 2010 @05:42AM (#31313524)
    When I said the Millennium Bug would strike again, you all thought I was crazy! Who's laughing now?

  • They'd better fix this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) * on Monday March 01, 2010 @06:00AM (#31313600) Journal

    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.

    • I wonder if the firmware will actually update, the servers have a fit as the date on the machine does not match that of the server, and again, "invalid copyright protection" error appears.

    • I can't sign into PSN on my US 60GB, so it's looks like I'm affected by this... :(

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vlm ( 69642 )

      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.

      PS2s are still available retail for $99, as far as I know. Compared to the cost of replacing all the worlds old PS3s, throwing in a PS2 as a consolation prize is no big expense, plus it depletes the warehouses, probably a convenient way to discontinue the PS2. That's what a reputable company would do. Oh, wait, this is Sony, home of the root kit. No, I guess you're just out of luck.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Raxxon ( 6291 )

        Except I would want a PS2 from the 4th through 8th revisions of the hardware along with an Ethernet adapter for the unit.

        That's what I gave up when I moved to the PS3 (Specifically a 4th gen with Ethernet adapter). Anything else is not "fair replacement".

  • I just hooked my PS3 up after disconnecting it for a couple of weeks, and noticed the date was off and I couldn't connect to the PSN. Oh well, might as well read Slashdot! And I find this. Someone call James Randi, I think we found a psychic!

  • My PS3 slim wouldn't stay logged in on PSN yesterday evening, didn't have any issues earlier that day. Not sure what the error code was, and I haven't tried it today (because I'm obviously at work).

    Also interesting to see that also games on the PS3 have shitty DRM that requires online activation/presence. Are they really trying to kill gaming on all platforms?

    • Re:No PSN on sim yesterday (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mjwx ( 966435 ) on Monday March 01, 2010 @07:43AM (#31314034)

      Are they really trying to kill gaming on all platforms?

      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).

      So at least write to your representative (I know in the US this will do nothing but not all /.ers are in the US) about DRM.

      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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Sancho ( 17056 )

      Are they really trying to kill gaming on all platforms?

      I don't know, but they've pretty well made me decide not to get a PS3. I was waffling, so I know I'm not their target demographic in the first place, but I'm frankly sick of phone-home DRM. Here's a perfect example of it failing and locking out legitimate users.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by dangitman ( 862676 )

        but I'm frankly sick of phone-home DRM. Here's a perfect example of it failing and locking out legitimate users.

        Except that isn't what happened. It's a clock error. It has nothing to do with phoning home.

  • Effects are rather... odd (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Raxxon ( 6291 ) on Monday March 01, 2010 @06:36AM (#31313746)

    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."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vlm ( 69642 )

      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."

      AKA the "it just works" console gaming experience? Or are you running a PS3 emulator on a windows PC? I haven't had/heard that kind of agony in gaming since trying to get Wing Commander working by editing config.sys lines back in 1991-ish.

      I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious, since your experience is supposed to be unpossible on a console.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Raxxon ( 6291 )

        80gb "mostly hardware" BC PS3 unit. Not an emulation setup or anything.

        It could very well be the HD picked today to start giving out, but it's kinda odd in that a friend of mine was playing Star Ocean under his profile on the system 2 hours before. Didn't have issues saving, didn't crash or anything. When we came back after grabbing a bite to eat is when the "fit hit the shan". Went to start up Star Ocean on my profile (already had a game saved at the first save point so everything had already been installe

  • Sony timer (Score:5, Funny)

    by reybrujo ( 177253 ) on Monday March 01, 2010 @06:49AM (#31313790) Homepage

    It is not a bug, it is the Sony timer [wikipedia.org].

    • I actually found such a timer once in a philips (iirc) video recorder... The thing would only play black and white after a certain date. resetting the clock solved the problem...

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )

        A loose S-Video connection can also result in black-and-white video if the chrominance pin isn't connecting.

  • Since when is a year = 2 mod 4 EVER a leap year? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kalidasa ( 577403 ) on Monday March 01, 2010 @08:06AM (#31314182) Journal
    Guys, it's really not that hard:
    GregYear <- (appropriate year for start of Gregorian era in locale)

    IF (month = 2 AND year MOD 4 = 0 AND (year < GregYear OR year MOD 100 > 0 OR year MOD 400 = 0))
    {MaxDayForMonth <- 29}
    ELSE IF (month = 2)
    {MaxDayForMonth <- 28}
    ELSE IF (month IN (4,6,9,11))
    {MaxDayForMonth <- 30}
    ELSE
    {MaxDayForMonth <- 31}
    (pseudocode style adapted for Slashcode)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JamesP ( 688957 )

      My thoughts exactly, I mean...

      It fails the FIRST TEST, that is, ((year % 4) == 0) for leap years. Guys, 2010 % 4 == 2, I mean

      the mind boggles

      • A leap year miscalculation is no worse than the skewed random shuffle bug [slashdot.org] reported in Microsoft's browser selection screen yesterday. If that's the problem with these PS3's (which I doubt), it could be something similarly brain dead:

        int year = getYear();
        int shortYear = year % 10;
        bool leapYear = ( shortYear % 4 == 0 );

        Somebody tested that on 2001 through 2009 and declared it good enough.

  • How to fix Netflix PS3 (Score:4, Informative)

    by BroadbandBradley ( 237267 ) on Monday March 01, 2010 @08:26AM (#31314310) Homepage

    I ran into this problem last night trying to watch Netflix on the PS3. the Netflix disc gave me a cannot connect error.... Being a slashdot reader my first though was I'd done something weird with my router ports.. So Mucked with those for awhile first making sure I hadn't done something weird. Then I noticed the system date was wrong on the PS3. I tried "Set Time via Internet" which failed, then I Set time manually and tried Neflix again and it works as normal. I'm sure the Servers figured that a 10 year old packet was "timed out" and didn't respond (or the PS3 won't respond to communication from 10 years in the future).

    Worked for me, didn't try any games yet though.

  • god damn, how f*cking hard is this!?

    bool leap_year(int year) {
    return (year%4==0 && year %100!=0) || year%400==0;
    }

    There, I just pulled the above code out of my ass, and it's so damn simple! I don't claim any copyrights to this! Go ahead, copy 'n paste it into any of your products as you like (also commercial and closed source, I don't even want a mention!), if that is really to hard for you, you lame ass tinkerers!

  • Talk about timing: I downloaded Flower for my 5 year old, who loves just flying around in the pretty fields, and the game won't start because of this error. A single-player game, that has no multiplayer aspect, that doesn't even keep score, and it can't be played because it can't connect to the network.

    I guess it's because Flower has trophy support, but really...you can't store the trophy information locally and then transmit later? I couldn't sit there, looking at the error screen, then trying to explain t

  • what will happen in 15 years? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PmaxII ( 1599235 ) on Monday March 01, 2010 @10:08AM (#31315276)
    2 months ago my PS3 died (i've replaced it since)... so I decided to show to my kids what kind of games we played when I was a kid. So I dug out of the basement my old ps1, my sega genesis and my 30 years old mattel Intellivision... All of them worked. I didn't expect anything else! (now I remember why we were playing real hockey outside ...) But it make me wonder, will my ps3 still be working in 15 years (or maybe 30)... A simple drm check and everything is down... I have COD warfare 2, and it has to connect to the net ?? I didn't know that.. And I sure would'nt have buy that game if I knew that... What if the current ps3 network is not compatible with the network in 30 years.. what if sony's servers are down next year? I have a serious question here, are we really all going toward this kind of drm in everything (tv, blueray, fridge, beds (whatever..)) or is it dying (like for the mp3s) ?

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