The DRM thing with the new Xbox has people confused, as far as the fee goes, you don't pay it, whoever gets the game has to pay it. The $100 difference between the PS4 and Xbox can easily be tallied up to the fact that the new Xbox comes with the kinect. As to the having to have the Xbox check in every 24 hours being a focal point of people's bitching and they all say "well I don't want to have to ask Microsoft to play a game", it's really no different than when you install a game on your hard drive from a disc now. In order to play it if you installed it from the disc is to put the disc in to prove you own it, all the new system is doing is eliminating the need for the disc while preventing people from pirating the game. Once you trade the game in now, you can't play it unless you own a physical copy, same with the new connection system. Basically what happens when you buy a game is you link the license with your account, when you trade it in, that fee that someone else pays is to transfer the license from you to them. The thing is that there may not always be a fee, while Microsoft's first party developers will feature that, they're leaving it up to Third party developers to opt into it or not.