PS3 Console Struck by Leap Year Bug

PS3 Console Struck by Leap Year Bug

Techtree News Staff, Mar 02, 2010 1837 hrs IST

As consoles were programed to take 2010 as a leap year

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Do you recollect the Y2K bug horror that haunted every PC user from switching on their systems for days? A similar, uninformed bug that set the console date at February 29 and stopped connecting to the PlayStation Network struck the PlayStation 3 owners. This bug affected only the non-PlayStation 3 Slim model owners. Those who suffer from the bug should simply reset their console date to the current date.

Several UK and North America based users gaming online through their PlayStation 3 consoles faced connection errors post midnight on February 28. Apparently, loads of complaint started hitting Sony PlayStation 3 forum boards. Sony acknowledged the issue and promised to come out with a fix.

It turns out that non-PS3 Slim consoles were programmed to identify 2010 as a Leap Year and so, the system date after February 28 changed to February 29 instead of March 1. The affected users need to disconnect their consoles from the Internet and then reset the System date manually or else simply disconnect and reconnect to the web.

Sony has finally announced that PlayStation Network service has been restored and also apologized for the issue that troubled many PS3 owners.

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Discussion Board

(14) Comments

Tracy

,Pembroke Pines, on Mar 02, 2010 08:35 PM

Hmmmm, this is very strange. It was my understanding that you could easily find whether any given year was a leap year by modding it by 4. If the remainder is 0, it is a leap year. Sounds to me as if the programmers over at Playstation need to be replaced with those that can perform simple calculations. It is no wonder that there are always bugs that need to be fixed. Has Playstation never heard of QA?

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Dez Nutz

,JoeMaMaSHouse, on Mar 02, 2010 10:41 PM

Please.... Like Microsoft's Xbox360 Q&A? Red Ring Of Death? Get a clue...... Second to Nintendo, is Sony with it's Playstation platforms. The Q&A preformed by Sony is top notch, but alas, someone let this one slip and they probably lost their job for it too. Until you have debugged millions and millions of lines of developer code for both firmware and software applications, go eat a Xbox 360, because you have no idea what's involved and the complexities that dynamically occur during the testing life cycle. In fact, I'm surprised that this bug is the biggest issue to stem from Sony in the last couple of years - that says a lot about the company and the Q&A - and this bug isn't even that big of a deal. Nope, I say outstanding Q&A work preformed by Sony. If Sony didn't do a good Q&A job, they wouldn't hold the market share they do, consumers would prevent them from making too much of a market impact because who would buy a system that is well known to flip out at random and display error codes or a red ring..... That's right, microsoft does with xbox, and they have the lowest market share.... ;( QQ 2 u

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Tushar Pereira

,London, on Mar 03, 2010 05:12 AM

Not all years divisible by 4 are leap years. Years that are evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years.For example, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not. Similarly, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600, 2700, 2900 and 3000 will not be leap years, but 2400 and 2800 will be

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Lisa

,Albany, NY, on Mar 02, 2010 10:34 PM

I believe there is more to it than Sony is saying. My son plays Modern Warfare 2 and the game would not load due to the errors described. I had him disconnect the PS3 from the Internet, set the date manually to 3/1/2010 and create a new user. The game still would not load as a stand alone. We then reverted all of the settings back to the orignal setup. Then low and behold sometime after 9PM EST everything magically started working again; friends started popping up on the screen while my husband was playing NHL 2010 which seemed to be unaffected by the alleged internal clock issue.

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Jon B

,London, on Mar 02, 2010 07:12 PM

"Do you recollect the Y2K bug horror that haunted every PC user from switching on their systems for days?" No, I don't remember this at all. I remember the hype and the fearmongering - I also remember that none of it amounted to anything and that the vast majority of systems were completely unaffected. Did something terrible happen in India that the rest of the world missed out on? If so then please tell us because we all thought that Y2K was a big joke and we just laughed it off with no discernable effect.

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LanceSmith

,USA, on Mar 02, 2010 07:47 PM

Amazing...everyone works together to head off a problem and instead of recognizing that feat, you call it hype. The Y2K was neither hype nor fearmongering. We (the community) fixed the problem so that people like you (the herd) wouldn't notice it....apparently, we were successful.

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PeedeeAZ

,Phoenix, on Mar 02, 2010 08:14 PM

Actually, thousands of programmers worked tirelessly to ensure your banking information didn't go delinquent and that the utilities such as electricity and water remained on and working. You assume because your low-end PC didn't have a problem that all the mainframes made prior to 1981 didn't have one as well. The issue was with older computers not having a 2 bits allocated to the date. Your computer was able to know the date 01/01/2000, but older computers would see 01/01/00. If you don't see a problem with that, your are ignorant.

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Razy

,Delhisville, on Mar 02, 2010 08:35 PM

Why don't you f***k off from here, you racist freak. If you have to find faults in the article just because it is written by an Indian, then go to hell b@sta@rd. Why even bother to come here!

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fredflintstone

,Boston, on Mar 02, 2010 08:32 PM

This article is completely wrong. The bug caused my system date to be set to 12/31/1999. At that point, I could not connect to PSN, and I could not set the time via the internet. I manually set the time so that it was correct, and that DID NOT resolve the problem. I turned off my wireless router, cutting the connection to the internet, and the symptoms remained. I brought the router back up and tried again and the symptoms remained. Yesterday, I turned on my PS3, and the date had randomly changed to some time in April. At that point, I was able to reset the system clock using the internet, and everything started working. There was no firmware update available, and to the best of my knowledge no changes were pushed to my system unless Sony has the ability to push a change without user interaction. As a result, I strongly believe that Sony fixed this on their end somehow.

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Mark

,Northport, on Mar 02, 2010 08:19 PM

Fix for PS3

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Tony

,Bentonville, on Mar 02, 2010 08:07 PM

Sony "programmed" the console to recognize the year as a leap year? I would love to see how that happened. Finding leap years is a simple math equation in an IF/THEN statement. We did it in my first programming class, and the equation is rather simple. No need to code for each year - just make the equation that will dynamically adjust for every year, no matter how far into the past or future. Seriously SONY...

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Keith

,Columbus, on Mar 02, 2010 08:07 PM

Wow, what an embarrassing bug to bring down so many systems. And the Y2K problems WAS a problem, it just never amounted to sending us back to the stone age, as many people feared. Many companies had to sift through thousands of lines of code to change how this data was being stored. It happened so smooth that people thought that nothing had to be done and it was all hype.

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bigbearclaw85

,Chicago, on Mar 02, 2010 07:17 PM

THIS ARTICLE IS GIVING BAD INFORMATION. I didn't have to reset anything or disconnect from the internet. SONY fixed the problem on their end. I tried to reset the time and date manually and that was unsuccessful in fixing the issue. It required SONY to fix the problem on their end.

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TommyAllen

,Grantham, on Mar 02, 2010 07:48 PM

Sony didnt do anything on their end the internal clock on the ps3 went to march the 1st when it turned to the second, wich then resolved the issue because the OS clocked reconigzed the date being correct or at least real which is why it didnt work ebcause the clock thought it was the 29th when there isnt a 29th. But you are right you dont have to do anything but your console might be a day behind.

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