20 games each coming this year.
iPhone games publisher ngmoco has announced a new Series C funding round of $25 million, while also acquiring rival firm Freeverse for an undisclosed amount.
The funding was led by Institutional Venture Partners, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Norwest Venture Partners and Maples Investments. ngmoco's original investment came from Kleiner Perkins' iFund.
The acquisition of Freeverse should bolster ngmoco's position on the App Store. Earlier this week, Freeverse announced that its games have generated more than five million paid downloads on Apple's store.
Talking to TechCrunch, ngmoco CEO Neil Young says the company is prospering from its shift to a free-to-play model, where its games are funded by in-app payments from players.
Touch Pets Dogs and Eliminate have been downloaded more than nine million times between them, with Young saying that "on any given day, you have about 2% of your audience paying you money".
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It seems Freeverse's games will be switched to a similar freemium model. Young also says that both companies plan to release around 20 games in 2010 for iPhone.
The acquisition is the biggest merger yet in the iPhone space, and could be the first signs of a consolidation in 2010, as publishers bulk up for App Store success.
