Should Xbox Live Match by Age?

How many times have you turned down the volume on your headset, or fumbled to find the mute button in the middle of a match when you’ve got a foul-mouthed 10 year old babbling incoherently into your match of Halo? Have you found that playing with pre-teens is one of the major detriments of playing on Xbox Live? I certainly have had my fair share of these experiences, and typically play without my headset even on my head anymore.

Mark Wilson of Kotaku asks a simple question: Why doesn’t Xbox Live use age when forming matchmaking groups? As Microsoft repositions Xbox Live into a more community-based service, with Friends-of-Friends and online bio pages, it would seem logical that moving towards an environment where fostering friendship would be a good idea. With several hundred thousand players in a system like Halo, forming groups where the younger players typically played together, and the older players played together, would keep the two maturity levels from clashing.

Although, I might miss out on some of the entertainment. A couple weeks ago I was treated to an entire round of Halo where all I could hear on my headset was Akon’s “Sorry, Blame it on Me” sung by a little kid who replaced “You can put the blame on me” with “You can blame the Halo 3″. It was actually kind of funny.  Kind of.