There was bad news this morning for gamers eagerly awaiting the release of EA's super-ambitious Spore. No, the game itself hasn't slipped again, but the Spore Creature Creator application, which was due to launch today, is now coming out tomorrow.

What's that? It's an app that EA is releasing in advance of Spore itself, which will allow people to design all manner of beasties ready to use in the main game later this year. It's a cool and interesting thing to do.

But it got me thinking, why aren't mobile phones being used more for this kind of thing? Pre-release type applications that prepare you for a console or PC game's release, I mean. You could be building monsters, creating an RPG party, tuning a car, scouting footballers, or designing a tennis kit even more retina-shredding than the lime-green effort Rafa Nadal wore at Queens last week.

You'd do this in a mobile app, then upload the results to the publisher's server, ready to download to your console or PC when the main game comes out.

(Memo to Sega: I would happily pay a fiver for a full nerdtastic Football Manager app that lets me spend the month leading up to the PC release combing through lower-league players and free agents to build a shortlist. Do it.)

The publisher gets a nifty way to build / capitalise on anticipation for the console game, or even generate some extra revenues. Meanwhile, us gamers get something to do in the long weeks leading up to a hot new game on another platform.

What's more, this would finally give the hardcore players who sneer at mobile a reason to do something game-related on their phones. Who knows, a clever bit of 'Try More Games' marketing within such an application might even get them to, well, try some mobile games too.

It seems such a logical thing to do, yet nobody's done it. They've talked about it, though.

Several years ago, EA's mobile boss at the time was floating the idea of downloading a FIFA player to your phone to train up using a mini-game, before re-importing them into the console version.

Connectivity has been one stumbling block – something that's gradually being solved with the wider proliferation of flat-rate data tariffs and handsets designed for, well, data connectivity.

And while Spore Creature Creator itself looks too technically and graphically complex to squeeze into a mobile app, many of the examples I listed earlier (cars, sport kits, scouting) could easily work.

EA is one publisher clearly waking up to the general idea of an application that comes out before a main game. Here's hoping it – and other publishers – see mobile as an increasingly viable way to do this too. But, hey, what do you think?