So, the PS3 Internal Clock issues (aka, the Internal Clock Of Moderate Inconvenience, or ICOMI) seem to have been resolved on their own. How easy was this for Sony? All they had to do was tell people to sit tight, and the issue resolved itself. No patch, no connectivity to PSN (good thing, too, since ICOMI pooched PSN access), no need to send your console in. Apparently, the issue lies with an ARM chip inside the PS3. A similar issue pooched the 30GB Zune players back in 2008 (and the install base of three dozen screamed bloody murder at the time) and might be traced to a similar chip, if you believe all the accounts going around on the Intertubes right now.

Basically, for some unknown reason, the PS3 thought that 2010 was a leap year (it’s not, in case you actually didn’t know this). This is likely a chip issue that a software fix wouldn’t have done much for. It’s believed that the chip treats every even year as a leap year. So when February 28th ended, the PS3 rolled over to February 29th, 2010, which does not exist, and all heck broke loose. That’s why this is the first time this happened. The PS3 came out in late 2006, so you didn’t have this issue back then, and 2008 actually was a leap year. So, by that token, unless Sony figures out a fix in the next four years, or your PS3 Phat dies a horrible death in that time, we can likely expect a similar issue to happen on March 1st, 2014. Better make other plans, unless you believe the Mayan prophecy that the world is doomed in 2012, or you think the Large Hadron Collider will open up a black hole that swallows us all. In that case, carry on, nothing to see here.

This is actually a really bad bug. Seriously, how do you mess up something as basic as leap year code? That’s pretty sloppy, and if it is a chip problem, I wonder if Sony could really have done anything here. Maybe go after the chip maker to get some sort of consideration that they can pass along to us in the form of a free downloadable game? I wouldn’t say no.