Mobile game publishers are consistently enthusiastic about preloading trial versions of their games on handsets, even if it's hard to get them to talk actual conversion rates.

Still, the fact that preloads are an excellent discovery mechanism can only be enhanced by these comments from Sony Ericsson's games manager Peter Ahnegard:

"We know that 80 per cent of all Sony Ericsson handset owners go into the games menu and start a game at least once," he says. "That's a really high number, and it's telling us that we need to make sure they will get a good game experience."

This includes increasing the number of game preloads, judging by the recently-announced F305 handset. Whereas most Sony Ericsson phones have between two and four game preloads, the F305 has 11.

"It's a big step up for us," he says. "It makes us more likely to hit the target of having a good handful of games that the handset owners will enjoy."

Three of those games were developed to show off the F305's motion-sensing capabilities - something Sony Ericsson is working hard to get publishers and developers to support.

"Hopefully they're aware that we won't let them down," he says. "We want to create the business opportunities for these games. We're aware that there probably aren't that many motion-sensing devices out there to create a really solid business case, so that's what we've got to do, to ensure developers and publishers have the opportunity to be profitable."

One of the ways Sony Ericsson is doing that is with PlayNow Arena, its upcoming mobile content service that was first announced several months ago. Although a lot of the coverage has focused on its music aspects, Ahnegard is keen to stress that games will be a core focus too.

The service will effectively merge Sony Ericsson's existing PlayNow and Fun&Downloads stores into one. So far, the likes of EA Mobile, Gameloft, Glu, THQ Wireless, Digital Chocolate and I-play have agreed deals to distribute their games through PlayNow Arena.

The interesting thing is that PlayNow Arena won't just be a retail channel. Ahnegard hints that Sony Ericsson will be launching a wider mobile games community around it.

"We're definitely seeing that it will have some kind of service layer for games moving forward," he says. "It's a real opportunity for us to do more than have just another deck. We want to do something that brings more value to the games for end consumers."

He won't be drawn on whether that means an N-Gage style player community, with rankings and other connected features. It would certainly be a bold move though.

He also bats back a question about whether Sony Ericsson will be bundling the Zeemote JS1 joystick with any of its phones, as rumoured, although he admits that he loves the device itself.

Overall, Ahnegard is positive about the state and future for mobile games. ""We're seeing more and more really good games," he says.

"In the early days, there were a lot of bad apples being submitted to our channels, but there are far fewer now. The amount of games being submitted to us is also increasing, although I don't know exactly why. Perhaps because the business is more mature and more stable. It's not the Wild West any more, and that has attracted new players to the market."

He says Sony Ericsson remains keen to work with smaller developers as well as the big publishers, although resource pressures mean that sometimes involves pointing them off to one of Sony Ericsson's aggregator partners, like an operator would.

Lastly, Ahnegard thinks developers should be investigating the potential of Project Capuchin, an initiative announced by Sony Ericsson in April this year that builds bridges between the Flash Lite and J2ME development platforms.

"It's not just limited to gaming, but it's really interesting for game developers," he says. "It lets them do things like create a SWF file within the Java file, so they can have the presentation layer - the UI - totally in flash, but still have the powerfulness that Java enables."

The first handset supporting Project Capuchin will be launched in the third quarter of this year.