new and welcome Halo feature was announced in Bungie’s latest Web update: an A-Hole Button, as it’s called internally. Here’s what Bungie has to say about it:

“Anyone who’s played MP on Xbox Live knows the following is true: Teenagers, plus anonymity, plus microphone = idiot. Xbox Live already gives you powerful tools to mute, well, tools on a case by case basis. The “A-Hole Button” in Halo 3 lets you exact instant, silent vengeance. These kind of vocal buttmunches, as it turns out, are exactly as fun to play against as normal people, as long as you can’t hear them. So now, you simply press a button (back button, for the moment anyway) and up comes the score list with everyone’s tag on it. The right stick lets you highlight the miscreant and you can then instantly mute them for the rest of the game. These morons continue smacktalking anyway because they can’t help themselves, but if you don’t have to listen to it, you can simply enjoy killing them over and over again, knowing that as their Ritalin wears off and their frustration builds, it’s less and less fun for them. Aaaah. So satisfying.

“Any muted player you have selected in your Xbox Live account overrides Halo 3’s new system, but that should actually enhance the choice of maroons you’re editing out of your gameplay. Best of all, it means fewer wasted or frustrating gameplay sessions. We’re doing our best to come up with lots of smart solutions for stuff like this, but honestly, we can’t be parents to some of these poltroons. We’re much more concerned with giving you guys the tools you need to silence them.”

While it’s easy to just turn your headset off or just remove it entirely, it’s good to see a more elegant solution to a common Xbox Live problem. It’s about time.