As I pointed out earlier today when the news broke, it used to be that $5 million was considered sufficient if you were planning on launching some sort of developer fund.

US outfit W3i has gone large, however, with its $10 million AppX fund, which is designed to fund user acquisition for freemium games on iOS and Android.

We caught up with its vice president of corporate strategy Ryan Weber to find out how the fund will work and why the company is attacking the market so aggressively.

PocketGamer: $10 million is a lot of cash, but presumably this is notional in-kind $10 million?

Ryan Weber: These funds are available today. We do not restrict our partners to buying from our own network, thus, this is real cash being committed.

It is our intention to work through the games and determine an appropriate user acquisition plan that is mutually agreeable. The funding then typically comes by W3i paying for the advertising expense for the developer until such time as the game can cash-flow on its own.

Why have you offered double what the typical developer fund in the past has been?

W3i has a strong balance sheet and is a profitable company. We feel the size of the fund reflects the health of our company and our commitment to supporting those high quality developers who need a boost.

Highly successful games can require significant capital to seize the opportunity available to them for cost-effective user acquisition. W3i expects to have more than fifty high quality apps that participate in this program. We expect many of them to be hits but on average we think this funding level is adequate to support this quantity.

What sort of content are you looking for?

Currently, our focus is on freemium mobile social games for iOS and Android. We already have partners with simulation, RPG, and hardcore games.

Our main concern is that the game concept appeals to large enough audience to potentially deliver on being a hit and with our support. We will do everything we can to help it become one.

Is there a limit on how much a single developer could get?

Several million dollars is the limit for any particular game. It is our plan to work with the developer to source cost-effective distribution.

We expect a few highly successful games to eat up a big chunk of the fund, but we'll spend enough money to determine the performance of every title.

Can you explain how W3i's user acquisition process works?

W3i provides access to distribution from its own network as well as its partner networks. Our user acquisition team is experienced in purchasing performance-based campaigns that have driven hundreds of millions of installs for our company.

This team will put together a recommended user acquisition plan, comprising of W3i and its partner ad networks, to deliver the best results for their campaign. The developers and W3i's staff will be working together to design and refine the user acquisition plan.

In the past, you've been keen to show that incentivised downloads can be a source of good traffic, so do you think Android has an advantage over iOS?

W3i sees opportunities on both platforms. The user acquisition plans definitely vary by platform and so it is our plan to optimise them accordingly, but we prefer not to disclose specifics regarding those differences.

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Earlier in 2011, you launched a social publishing fund. Can you say how that worked and how your experience fed into the AppX fund?

First, the games in this fund are at varying stages of development. The most elaborate projects are actually coming to market over the next 60 days globally. Thus, it is a bit premature to speak to how well it worked in terms of delivering hits.

I can say that we have been pleased with our progress (most apps have been released in test markets) and that is why we created AppX, as well as expanded our team to include an additional mobile game producer and a full time analyst specialising in game analytics that have proven so crucial to these games' performance.

We have seen the importance of game balancing and soft-launching games, and now highly recommend to developers a process for developing a successful freemium game.

We have found that while each game and developer is unique, there is a repeatable process for delivering better results for these games and that through on-going collaboration week-after-week on pre-production and post-production work increases the ultimate performance of the games.

What do you think is the most exciting thing about monetisation in the app space?

The successful games are building massive audiences. In-app purchases present an incredibly lucrative source of revenue but we are most excited by the opportunity to help developers become more sophisticated about the business models they deploy in such apps to ultimately maximise their lifetime value and the growth of their user-base.

Thanks to Ryan for his time.

You can find out more about the AppX fund here.