[Update] Sony believes that they may have found a solution to the problems plaguing PS3 owners, and that a fix may be available within 24 hours, but for now warns PS3 owners not to use the console until further notice [End of Update]

After widely reported offline and online PlayStation 3 errors began surfacing late last night and early this morning (depending on your geographical location), game developers are now reporting similar errors with their specialised PS3 debug units.

Due to an endless looping error message, the debug units are apparently being sent into uninterruptible rebooting cycles, which is thought to be related to the problems users are experiencing with regular retail PS3s.

Even if your PS3 console has been offline, there is a high probability (if it’s an older model) that the internal date may have reverted back to 12/31/1999, as reported by Joystiq, which has caused data corruption errors and resulted in newly acquired content, such as downloaded games and awarded in-game Trophies, to not be recognised and ‘lost.’

Sony is aware of the problem and is currently hard at work on a fix, and we should hear from the company soon in this regard.

Source: Develop Online