This morning Gamasutra is reporting that there is  a widespread PlayStation 3 outage. Users have been experiencing  a bug that began last night.  This morning Sony has responded saying that the problem has been located  in the system’s clock functionality,  affecting all models other than the newer slim PS3. The  consoles nick named the ”fat” 60 and 80 GB are unable to connect to the PlayStation  Network. There are also reports of some  offline games  having issues due to trophy  functionality being down. This does not bode well for troubled Sony who has been trying to figure out how to convert the lack luster network to paid subscriptions. While the question remains “For what” since the PSN has been trailing far behind the XBL’s thriving, lucrative social network.

Heavy Rain seems to be one of the games having problems due to the bug. Which just figures, because I have the review half done and the the game is sitting  in the 80G fat…

The errors users receive include the system’s date being reset to  January 1, 2000; forced sign-outs and error messages, trophy failures,  problems setting system dates and times, and errors playing video  rentals because of their expiration date.

The trophy error in particular disables recent chart-topper Heavy  Rain, for example. Users including Gamasutra’s own staff, on  attempting to boot the game, receive a failure notice that reads:  ”Registration of the trophy information could not be completed. The  game will quit.”

“We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours,” says Sony  in a statement. “In the meantime, if you have a model other than the  new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing  so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording  obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.”

Concludes the statement: “We are doing our best to resolve the issue  and do apologize for any inconvenience caused.”