Sony, the company that is responsible for overseeing the Playstation network, stranded consumers subscribed to the service last night when a malfunction made it nearly impossible for PS3 users to connect to the network. The bug mainly affected older PS3 models, which reported the first of March as being February 29th. This phenomenon occurs during what is called a leap year. This date malfunction obviously caused some connectivity issues between the older model PS3s and Sony’s servers, leaving millions of players unable to quench their thirst for gaming. When news of the problem first made its way to Sony officials, they urged consumers to avoid attempting to establish any sort of connection as it could potentially cause further problems. As of now, the issue has been addressed and gamers can once again enjoy their PS3 consoles. Officials are relieved that the extent of the problem was nothing very severe.

If you are PS3 owner who continues to have problems gaining connectivity with the Playstation network, you are asked to do a manual reset of your system clock. Instructions for doing this should be available in either your PS3 owners manual or online.

This short-lived problem brings back memories of the Y2K frenzy, where people were on edge because computers were thought to be unable to distinguish between the year 2000 and 1900 (many software programs of the time were written in such a way to only store 2 fields for the date). The Y2K crises came and went without any sort of hiccups, fortunately, much like this problem with the Playstation network.