PS3 wont connect to Airport Extreme

I am having the same exact problem. Every other device (iPhone, Wii, Xbox360, TiVo, etc...) in my household connects to the airport using a very long WPA2 key. The PS3 fails the handshake every time. So I finally resorted to having the PS3 join a guest network on the airport, using a shorter key. This is a problem, as I cannot connect to any of my media streaming software, because it is on the guest network still.

have you tried using the wpa pre shared key instead of the passphrase? i find it easier to enter the preshared key on some devices vs the regular password i use
and found one device that the password didn't work on it but when i used the preshared key it connected fine.

there are two ways to calculate the preshared key

1) go to airport utility, double click on your airport device in the top menu bar
you will see base station as a choice. click on Equivalent Network Password

2) go to http://www.xs4all.nl/~rjoris/wpapsk.html
give it your ssid and your password, and it will give you the preshared key

an oddity about airport utility is that the mac version lets you copy and paste the equivalent network password but the windows version will not.

the preshared key should work.

good luck

one final tip

when creating wireless passwords do not go outside of the ascii character set.
there is no ascii international standards that go outside of 0-128.

good character list
!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnop qrstuvwxyz{|}~

anything else will cause wireless problems on different machines or different fonts