Nintendo is happily sharing sales figures for Wii Sports Resort and the bundled Wii MotionPlus, and for good reason. Since launch, the $50 bundle has sold more than 500,000 units.

From Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo’s executive VP of sales & marketing, the news sounds something like this: “Through Monday we sold one copy of Wii Sports Resort roughly every 1.5 seconds continuously since it launched in the United States.” That’s an impressive stat, especially considering the nature of the game. Nintendo continues to successfully defy the convention of going for the hardcore market. The Wii Sports Resort sales do more than just add to Nintendo’s fat coffers, it puts the Wii MotionPlus in the hands of the public, effectively reducing the cost of all future games designed to employ the Wii MotionPlus’ advanced sensors. You won’t need to drop the extra $20 next timeyou want to play a MotionPlus enabled game.

Now, if we could only sort out what Nintendo is going to do with the Vitality Sensor.

Anyone surprised? Anyone at all? Thought not.

This is about the most uninspiring bit of Nintendo news ever, but it’s definitely worth at least noting, and probably congratulating Iwata and company on their great success. In just over a week’s time Wii Sports Resort has sold over 500,000 copies in the US alone.

Those numbers are pretty impressive, whether you expected them or not. As several commenters have pointed out on various sites, this is a game that really goes after the casual player. I’d expect it to spread much like Mario Kart did. I, for one, really hated the Wii’s Mario Kart when I first played it. A few attempts later with a group of friends, though, and I was enjoying myself. It gave us something fun to do in between a late lunch and our evening festivities. I’d expect WSR to have the same, “not a bad way to spend an afternoon” appeal for a lot of people. It just might take some time for more of those folks to buy it.