Zune Thoughts: Zune 30GB Devices Failing At Start Of 2009?

"Right, so this is a weird one: we're getting tons of reports - tons - about failing Zune 30s. Apparently, the players began freezing at about midnight last night, becoming totally unresponsive and practically useless.The crisis has been dubbed by Zune users 'Y2K9', due to the apparently synchronized faceplantings across the country. According to tipster Michael, the Zune users experienced something like this:"

Gizmodo is reporting that a lot of Zune 30GB owners are reporting their devices are freezing up today. The official Zune.net hardware forum already has several threads by 30GB owners. Could it have anything to do with the new year? I doubt it as Jan 1, 2009 has only just arrived in Adelaide, Australia as I post this. If you have a 30GB device, has it gone belly up? This seems to be too widespread to be a hoax.

Update: I've confirmed with a lot of people that this is indeed happening. A few interesting threads: 1) Facebook as a group for people with 30GB bricked devices and 2) A hard reset might be the fix. There will be no Happy New Year for the Zune team at Microsoft as I am sure many will be called in today to resolve this.

Update 2: Microsoft has updated the "Zune Service Status" at the Zune support site and has created a sticky thread where you can monitor the situation. If you have a 30GB device and are impacted (seems to be the latest firmware) then you should subscribe to that thread.

Update 3: It seems it will fix itself. See the post by Skipdeez in the Zune.net forums.