Several users on our forums and over on the official Playstation forums are reporting that they are unable to access the Playstation Network, and thus unable to play some games (Error 8001050F). Some other users are also reporting that their trophies are corrupting for no good reason. Sony has acknowledged this problem and are actively looking into it, so now all we can do is wait.

The cause of this outage is not known but it is theorized that the cause has something to do with the date, almost like Y2K for PSN. So far reports have only been with the PS3 Phat models, Slim models seem to be unaffected. There's a large majority of users reporting failure while a select lucky few are still able to access PSN. A temporary fix can be found below:

1. Go into System Settings and disable your internet connection
2. Set your date to 3/1/2010 (March 1st, 2010)
3. Reboot your system

Sony [Twitter]

Temporary Fix [PlayStation Boards]

UPDATE

Some new information that has cropped up by way of a new post over at the official PlayStation Blog site can be seen below.  The best advice for people who are effected is to keep your unit turned off until a fix is hopefully rolled out within the next 24 hours:

As you may be aware, some customers have been unable to connect to the PlayStation Network today. This problem affects the models other than the new slim PS3.

We believe we have identified that this problem is being caused by a bug in the clock functionality incorporated in the system.

Errors include:

• The date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000.
• When the user tries to sign in to the PlayStation Network, the following
  message appears on the screen; “An error has occurred. You have been
  signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)”.
• When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears
  on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; “Failed to install
  trophies. Please exit your game.”
• When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the
  Internet, the following message appears on the screen; “The current date
  and time could not be obtained. (8001050F)”
• Users are not able to play back certain rental video downloaded from the
  PlayStation Store before the expiration date.

We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. 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.

As mentioned above, please be advised that the new slim PS3 is not affected with this error. We are doing our best to resolve the issue and do apologize for any inconvenience caused.

So there you have it.  We'll keep you posted as new information is made available on this story.