“An error has occurred. You have been
signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)”

That was the message my PS3 greeted me with this morning when I went to have a play.

This is the same for many thousands of other PS3 owners too.

I also noticed the clock was wrong and changed that manually to see if it helped but it turns out that Sony have a bug in their system (and mine). This leap year has confused the PS3 and stopped all players using the older model PS3 (not the new slimline version) from connecting to the playstation network or even running some games offline.

Basically anything that requires the playstation to try and connect to any server (to get trophy information etc.)

The answer - don't use your playstation until they've sorted it out.

You can follow sony on Twitter to get updates - http://twitter.com/sonyplaystation

Right now that just points back to their blog (which says follow them on twitter for updates) and the blog tells you what I already have.

So - if like me you've been affected - we're out of luck until they work out how to fix it AND can get that fix to us - it's possible that we'll end up having to download a patch from the internet on a pc and then put it into the PS3 via a network or usb stick, but I hope they can do it automatically.

Unfortunately you're not going to know when or how until it happens or they update their blog/twitter with instructions.

So - that's my gaming today screwed. I just completed Heavy Rain at the weekend and went up to Prestige level 5 on the latest COD, so I'm hoping my game play has not been lost.

Let's hope they sort it out quickly and effectively.

Andy