will let all Microsoft
users watch the first episode of “
” season four — on track to become the most-pirated TV episode ever — for free starting Tuesday.
The episode will be available on Microsoft Xbox 360 and Xbox One from April 8-14, in a sampling strategy designed to drive non-HBO subscribers to sign up for the service.
SEE ALSO: ‘Game of Thrones’ Piracy for Season 4 Premiere Reaches Record Levels
In addition to Xbox, the episode of HBO’s hit fantasy series is available to pay-TV subscribers on the websites and free on-demand platforms of multiple cable and satellite providers during the sampling period. All episodes from previous seasons of “Game of Thrones” are currently available on HBO Go — which
suffered an outage when the season-four premiere became available
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on Sunday night.
On TV, the
“GoT” season-four premiere garnered 6.6 million viewers
, according to Nielsen estimates, up 50% from the season-three opener (4.37 million) and triple the 2.2 million who watched the show’s inaugural telecast in April 2011. It was the biggest TV audience for any HBO program since the 2007 finale of “The Sopranos,” which drew 11.9 million.
The popularity of “Game of Thrones” also makes it an unprecedented target for pirates: 1.17 million unique IP addresses accessed illegal torrents of the season-four premiere within the first 15 hours of the episode popping up online, according to piracy-tracking firm Excipio. That’s more than the third-season opener in April 2013, which drew 1.15 million downloaders in the first 24 hours.
Separately, HBO on Monday posted the first episode of Mike Judge’s comedy “
” free on
. “Silicon Valley,” a spoof of Internet startup culture, premiered Sunday following the “GoT” season-four opener. The episode will be available free on YouTube until April 28.
2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC