PS3 crash fix due within 24 hours

[UPDATE] This afternoon, afflicted PS3 Fats at the GameSpot offices were able to play games again and trophies appeared to be awarded as normal. However, Sony has still not given the all clear yet, and the PS3s in question all had erroneous dates of February 28 on their clocks, believed to be the source of the problem. Those who want to be 100 percent sure that they will earn trophies as normal may want to wait for Sony's final blessing.

[UPDATE 2] As of 5 p.m. PST on Monday afflicted PS3 Fats were awarding trophies with the correct date and time.

[UPDATE 3] Around 6 p.m. Sony declared the PlayStation Network was fully operational and gamers could resume playing as normal. A spokesperson also revealed the exact problem which led to the nearly day-long outage.

"We are aware that the internal clock functionality in the PS3 units other than the slim model, recognized the year 2010 as a leap year," said Patrick Seybold, SCEA's director of corporate communications and social media, on the official US PlayStation Blog. "Having the internal clock date change from February 29 to March 1 (both GMT), we have verified that the symptoms are now resolved and that users are able to use their PS3 normally."

The original story is below. [END UPDATES]

Last night, PlayStation 3 owners across the globe began flooding message forums to report showstopping errors while playing a range of games on Sony's console. The commonly reported error code, 8001050F, prevents gamers from signing into the PlayStation Network and in several cases disallows gameplay in both offline and online modes. Sony quickly acknowledged the error, stating that it was "aware of the issue" and is "currently investigating it."

Following up on the issue this morning, Sony issued a statement saying that it believes the problem is related to a bug in the PS3's internal clock and hopes to have the situation resolved within 24 hours. Also, as initially surmised, the bug afflicts all PS3 models other than the PS3 Slim, which was released in late August 2009.

Sony urged those who own models other than the Slim to keep their consoles powered off until the fix can be applied. According to the publisher, turning the console on while the problem persists "may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data."

Considering that the bug prevents gamers from connecting to the PSN, it is unclear how Sony intends to fix the firmware issue on the malfunctioning consoles. The publisher said that it expects to have more details later today.

For those wondering if their consoles have succumbed to the bug, Sony also released a list of reported errors, found below.

8001050F error messages:
--The date of the PS3 system may be reset to Jan 1, 2000.
--When the user tries to sign-in to the PlayStation Network, the following message appears on the screen; "An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)."
--When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; "Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game."
--When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the Internet, the following message appears on the screen; "The current date and time could not be obtained. (8001050F)"
--Users are not able to playback certain rental video downloaded from the PlayStation Store before the expiration date.