The combination of E3 and WWDC in the same week has seen plenty of companies announcing big numbers.

Bolt Creative's Pocket God has done 4.5 million sales and over 1 million IAP transactions, while Epic's Infinity Blade has earned it $10 million in six months.

Higher and higher, EA's Chillingo division has done 140 million game downloads on iOS since the App Store launched in July 2008, while Gameloft's iOS total over the same period is 200 million.

More impressive perhaps is the 200 million game downloads (80 percent iOS, 20 percent Android) just announced by US free-to-play social mobile start-up Storm8.

Raising a storm

Founded in March 2009 by ex-Facebook employees, it's now one of the largest social mobile networks in the world; running hardcore competitive games through its Storm8 brand and more casual female-oriented and cooperative experiences through TeamLava.

"We didn't want to dilute the Storm8 brand or confuse our players," says CEO and president Perry Tam of the decision to launch TeamLava in mid-2010.

It's since gone on to release the massively successful Story series of games (Restaurant Story, Zoo Story etc; nine to-date. Storm8's nine games are focused on the Live series, such as Vampire Live and Zombies Live.

The result is the company has more than four million daily active users and those 200 million downloads have are on over 58 million unique devices.

Show me the money

And, more significantly, in terms of business growth, Storm8's had its first $1 million day of revenue, the vast majority of which was generated by the purchase of in-game currency.

"It's a spike, partly because we were running a promotional event," Tam explains. But he doesn't expect it to be a one-off.

"It's a huge market. The growth in mobile is almost unimaginable."

Virtual item gold mine

In this regard, Tam points to the gradual but steady improvements that are coming to the fast-growing Android market as one positive trend.

"Google adding IAP was a big step and the wider roll-out of carrier billing will be an inflexion point," he predicts.

Significantly though, despite Storm8's scale, he's not very interested in alternative monetisation options. The company does some in-app advertising but has generally steered clear of the incentivised action space that has been so controversial on iOS.

"We're not big on alternative billing," Tam, who previously worked on Facebook's Credits system, explains. "If I have a spare minute, I'll spend it on it adding new content and items to keep our games fresh."

The number one goal

As the 50-strong company continues to grow to reach its goal of being the "number one social gaming company on mobile," maintaining the balance of working on new releases and keeping players of its current games happy and engaged is its key day-to-day activity.

"We focus on current games as much as new content. We need to constantly renew our virtual goods," he explains.

Longterm issues include supporting more languages - its games are currently English-only although 50 percent of players are outside North America - as well as supporting other mobile platforms such as Windows Phone as they become viable.

But as for the potential for the company, which to-date has been organically funded, to raise investment to fuel faster expansion or to consider a sale to one of the big players in the exploding social mobile space, Tam is forthright.

"I'm not talking about that. Just 200 million downloads and our one million dollar day," he states.

No doubt, there'll be plenty of time in future for such conversations.