Sony will debut the first three episodes of Powers — its first original, scripted TV show for the PlayStation — on March 10th, with the rest of the 10-episode season premiering weekly thereafter. The first episode will be free for everyone to stream online, but you'll have to be a PlayStation Network subscriber to watch the rest of the series.
PlayStation gets started with TV after Xbox winds down
Powers is supposed to be a gritty cop drama set in a world where criminals have superpowers and the cops do not. It's based on a long-running comic series by Brian Michael Bendis, who's also behind major Marvel titles like Secret War and Age of Ultron. There's no word yet on how the TV adaptation turned out, but the show's first trailer very much leaves its quality in question.
Sony announced a while back that it planned to start bringing originally programming to the PlayStation. It's one way that Sony can make its network more appealing — it already has exclusive games, so why not exclusive TV shows, too? — but it was also an obvious response to Microsoft's plans to create a ton of original programming for the Xbox. Of course, Microsoft has since scrapped pretty much all of those plans, meaning that Powers is now a response to nothing. Sony hasn't detailed where it intends to bring its original programming beyond this, but it's quite possible that it'll continue with slow, measured steps if it continues at all. The success of Powers will likely have a big say in that. We'll see how it does in a couple months.