UPDATE:

An update on the availability of Powers in New Zealand and how it differs to the way Powers is available in the US can be found at the end of this article.

Lies within selected countries only, that is.

For what good reason?

And you better believe they will.

Wait; no, we wouldn't.

The penultimate episode of the first season of Powers (the PlayStation Network’s first original, scripted series) will be available to watch today, April 21. The final instalment of Powers’ debut, 10-episode season will be released a week later, on April 28.Emerging from a fairly mammoth gestation period (a Powers TV series was in active development at FX as of early 2009, although it was reportedly optioned for film by Sony as far back as 2001), Powers was showcased during Sony’s E3 2014 press conference. There Sony revealed to the world that the long-discussed TV adaptation of writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Avon Oeming’s superhero-themed police procedural comic series was finally coming to the small screen, via the PlayStation Network. PlayStation Plus members would be eligible to watch the whole series for no additional cost.So, with the season nearing its conclusion, how has the PlayStation Network’s first foray into original programming shaped up? Is Powers ultimately worth watching?No, seriously, is it? I’m asking you. Is it any good?Because I’ve got no idea, unfortunately; I actually haven’t seen a single episode. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve wanted to check it out. I’m just not allowed to at the moment.Powers, as you may already be aware, is available right now to US PS Plus customers. It appears it's also available in a handful of other countries/regions too, including but not limited to France and Scandinavia. Either way, I don’t fit into any of these categories so I’m out of luck.To be honest I’ve not paid much attention to Powers since its E3 2014 reveal and I’m unfamiliar with the comic itself. I do, however, like superheroes and investigative cop shows, and I’m also a fan of several of the actors involved. I’d be happy to watch it, if it were available in Australia.But it’s not. Not yet, at least.We reached out to Sony some time ago for an explanation as to the reason why Powers isn’t yet available in places like Australia, Canada, or the UK. It doesn’t appear there is an explanation right now. At least, not one that’s being provided to the press. In February an update on the EU PlayStation.Blog assured us that Powers is “coming soon to the PAL region” but stopped short of providing an actual date. There’s been no word since.Now, I’m aware that setting up a US PlayStation account is a simple exercise; I previously used one to purchase DLC for the US versions of Rock Band. I’m not, however, going to subscribe to PS Plus with a US account; not when I already pay for it on my Australian account. I’m not keen on simply purchasing episodes of Powers à la carte via the US PS Store either; for the full season it’s more than what I pay for two months of my Netflix subscription, and I don’t even know if I’ll like it.Absurdly I can’t even watch the first episode of Powers that PlayStation published on YouTube. I can watch other Powers videos on the PlayStation YouTube channel, but not the free pilot. That is, the free pilot that anyone in the US with an internet connection can watch (regardless of whether they’ve ever slung a single dollar at a PlayStation product).I don’t think there’s a great deal of merit in this model anymore. Surely there’s not a lot to be gained from putting walls around content that people can otherwise seek out from shady sources with a few mouse clicks.I ponder the likes of Daredevil, another TV series based on a comic property. That is, one that I’m currently making my way through and enjoying immensely. Daredevil was made available via Netflix in the US and Netflix’s new Australian service at the same time. Customers who just signed up to the newly operational Australian Netflix service don’t need to gaze over the Pacific in envy at US Netflix consumers watching something they can’t. Whoever was in charge of pushing around the necessary papers to ensure Netflix’s Daredevil could be watched wherever the service is available made sure to do so. I’m genuinely baffled as to why Powers wasn’t released in the same way. Perhaps there’s a boring business reason but, from a consumer’s perspective, I’m struggling to see the difference between Daredevil and Powers. The only difference I can see is that one is available to all customers of the service that distributed it, and one isn’t. It’s 2015 and the world is a very small place these days. If you don’t provide something legally and conveniently people will seek out the most convenient illegal method of access.So what’s the problem? Is there a simple explanation, or has there been a failure elsewhere? Were there insurmountable hurdles preventing Powers from being released globally at the same time, or did PlayStation choose to release it this way? I know PlayStation operates bespoke PS Stores in a number of different countries and a simultaneous release would require a great deal of co-operation. But games are released to global release dates all the time.Based on the French and Nordic availability, and indeed the confirmation from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe that the show really is "coming to the PAL region in 2015" I'm assuming there aren't other plans.I'd certainly hope not, at any rate. Powers is produced by Sony Pictures Television, the same company that produces Community. How Community fans the world over rejoiced when the previously-axed cult sitcom got picked up by Yahoo Screen for a 13-episode sixth season. Yahoo Screen is ad-supported and does not require a paid subscription; we’d be able to watch Community season six for free!Nope. Community season six is only available in Australia via a premium streaming service called Stan, and in the UK it airs on the Sony Entertainment Television channel accessible via pay TV service.Does the fact Sony Pictures Television and Sony Computer Entertainment get invited to the same Christmas party necessarily mean Powers will come to the PSN worldwide as it did in the US? Hopefully. Nordic PS Plus customers can watch Powers for free, but it appears to be via an app supplied by a Scandinavian streaming service called Viaplay . It's a similar story in France; Powers is available free for PS Plus users "via an application downloaded from the PlayStation Store, developed in partnership with [French subscription TV service] OCS."So is this the hold up? Are we waiting until each territory can find a TV partner? If so, why weren't these partnerships arranged before the show began airing and Powers fans in neglected countries simply downloaded the show illegally, or gave up interest? And what if a territory can't find a partner?I’ve got years and years of TV to catch up on at this stage; more than I’ll probably ever get to. I doubt I’ll lose a wink of sleep if I never see a single minute of Powers; there’s so much happening in the TV industry right now it’s hard to get hung up on the perplexing absence of just one series. But surely that should have been motivation enough to get Powers in front of as many eyeballs as possible, rather than keep it cloistered away from most of the world?There’s a reason why every man and his dog on my social media feeds right now seems to be watching Daredevil, and yet I know plenty of local PlayStation users that wouldn’t recognise an episode of Powers if it popped up out of their corn flakes.I genuinely don't understand why Sony can't be more transparent here on this, in 2015. From the outside it just looks like a complicated mess. There has to be a valid reason why Powers is available to watch in the US and several other countries, but not in territories like Australia, the UK, or Canada. There has to be a reason why deals were able to be struck to get Powers up and running in France and the Nordic region, but not elsewhere (yet). So why can't we just hear it?Because without some kind of explanation it just looks like somebody has well and truly dropped the ball.

UPDATE: We mentioned above we hoped that Powers would come to other territories as it did in the US (that is, free to PS+ users) but it appears that won't necessarily be the case. We’ve received word from NZ readers that Powers is actually also available in New Zealand, but only through a TV and film streaming service called Lightbox and not via the PlayStation Network.

We contacted Sony for clarification on this and received the following statement:

“The first nine episodes of Powers are now available [in New Zealand] on Lightbox and the remaining episode will be available next week in line with the US.

You can check out Powers on Lightbox by downloading the app to your PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4 with their free trial www.lightbox.co.nz.”

So while any Kiwis interested in watching Powers can do so on their PS3 and/or PS4, it’s simply via the Lightbox app which is available for both consoles (which they need to subscribe to). The way we read this is that Powers isn’t simply free to PS+ users as it is in the US (in the US, PS+ members can watch the entire season free). In NZ Powers is only available by subscribing to Lightbox (and at the end of the free Lightbox trial PS+ users would be paying a third-party to watch Powers).

This was confirmed by Sony as correct. PS+ users and non-PS+ users alike can watch Powers for free within the 30-day Lightbox trial period but any consumer (PS+ subscriber or otherwise) would have to pay a monthly fee to continue watching.

In a recent press release Lightbox, for its part, described Powers ("a police procedural with superheroes, created by the PlayStation Network") as "exclusive to Lightbox."

Where is Powers free for PS+ users and where isn't it actually free to PS+ users? Not just geographically speaking, either; also, on what devices? We received a note below from a frustrated Norwegian PS3 owner and PS+ subscriber who claims the Powers app in Scandinavia can only be downloaded for PS4. In the US Powers "is available now to watch on PS3, PS4 and online" (as clearly stated here on the US PlayStation.Blog).

What an utter mess.

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Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can find him on Twitter, or chat with him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia