Sony to Playstation 3 Owners: Don’t Use Your Console While We Fix Bug!

Posted on 01 March 2010 by


Just a quickie here: Sony’s flagship Playstation 3 has been struck with a bug that is related to a clock setting on the online PSN system, but that bug ‘infects’ systems that connect to the network and make it impossible to play any games with Trophy capabilities. Unknown to many, Sony requires ‘Trophy Sync’ to occur when a game starts up, and this bug causes errors and therefore will not let you start any games with trophies. That just happens to be most of them – including last week’s hot release ‘Heavy Rain’ as well as most other popular games. The only bright spot is that apparently the bug doesn’t impact the more recently released ‘PS3 Slim’ systems.

According to the Playstation Blog article:

“As you may be aware, some customers have been unable to connect to the PlayStation Network today,”

“We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours,” Seybold said.

“In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.”

(emphasis mine)

Sony has actually had excellent reliability with their network and hardware, and as such most people don’t know that the trophy system requires online synchronization even for offline games to play.

As critical as I been with Sony regarding their treatment of customers (I think they see us as a myriad of ATM machines who inconveniently expect them to actually give us something in exchange for money), I have always been pleased with how they have handled their service and support in the past … and since I have had absolutely no issues with either my PSN account or any of the four PSP’s I own, I can’t comment on how that service works.

I hope that Sony gets this resolved quickly and that there is no lasting impact, but for now remember: leave your PS3 OFF!

For the official word on what is happening and to find out when things are fixed, head to Sony’s Playstation Blog.

Source: Playstation Blog

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