A GLITCH in the PlayStation3 which prevented users from connecting to the PlayStation Network and playing most games has been fixed without any intervention from Sony. The bug materialised when the PS3’s internal clock had problems switching dates from Feb 28 to March 1, wrongly believing 2010 was a leap year. However, because the non-existent Feb 29 has passed, the PlayStation3 glitch can be easily fixed by syncing your date and time from the XMB interface. The bug didn’t affect the newer “slim” PlayStation3 models that were launched last year.
For those interested in managing risk there are many questions here – why was the bug not discovered earlier, and if it can happen to the Sony PS3 with 40 million units sold, what else could be similarly impacted? This second question goes beyond games machines and consumer electronics; internal clocks are embedded in a vast range of equipment nowadays.
It also raises the questions regarding Sony’s reputation for quality, about Japan’s manufacturing reputation, and how to crises communications are impacted by new social media such as Twitter and Facebook, and the role of ‘unoffiical sources’ such as tech blogs not just in covering the story but also in their resources to identify both the problem and solution.
