Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) has announced its new PlayStation Vue TV product. It may be an attractive alternative to traditional cable and satellite systems. However, most people cannot get the new service. It is only available in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. The rest of America is out of luck.

Introducing a new product that is trumpeted as a revolutionary step away from a traditional entertainment system is sure to alienate potential customers who have no access to it. Vue does appear attractive. It runs from the cloud, which has become the case with many other movie and TV services, particularly Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN). It works with both PS3 and PS4 platforms, which means it might eventually be available to millions of people. It is priced from $49.99 to $69.99 a month. Those offers may be too high for a service that is very late to the streaming TV market. The $49.99 product only has a little more than 50 stations.

Other features are barely ordinary:

Tag your favorite shows and all upcoming airings will be automatically saved to the cloud for up to 28 days and never any conflicts.

Tag your favorite channels so they are easily accessible in the front of the Guide and on the Home Screen.

Find the perfect show for you. Filter thousands of shows by genre, channel and more so you can find exactly what you’re looking for.

Very many of the channels Sony offers barely have a modest viewer base, which means Vue will have limited appeal. Among those channels are Chiller and Sprout. Sony does not say much about premium content, which is front and center for products like Amazon’s.

Sony’s promotion for Vue is that consumers can “Stop missing out on great television,” at least for people who live in three cities. A product that is late to market has to do much better.

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