Wii Sports Resort has been a major focal point of Nintendo's strategy for the past couple of years, and the game carries the not insubstantial responsibility of selling the MotionPlus peripheral to the gaming public. The $20 hardware has succeeded where Nintendo has so far failed with the Vitality Sensor: it ships with its own killer app in the sequel to the original Wii Sports. The strategy has paid off; Nintendo has shared the numbers for the game's first week of availability, and the $50 game and peripheral package has sold over 500,000 units.

Nintendo was quick to tout the numbers. "Through Monday we sold one copy of Wii Sports Resort roughly every 1.5 seconds continuously since it launched in the United States," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. "This tells us consumers were eagerly waiting to get their hands on these fun activities, and it's a great start for a game that will have long-lasting appeal."

Wii Sports Resort opens the door for the MotionPlus

You can read our review of the uneven, but enjoyable, collection of sports games, but the story here is just how quickly Nintendo has been able to turn the MotionPlus peripheral into a success in the US. Not only have a half-million units of the hardware been put into American homes through the pack-in deal with Wii Sports Resort, but during the month of June the NPD Group reported that Nintendo sold 169,000 units.

Not impressed yet? That's not including the number of units that were packed into Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 on the Wii, which sold 272,400 units in June. Now, it's possible that some of those games were sold without the peripheral, but the draw of the title was the tight integration of the MotionPlus; it's safe to assume that the majority of units were purchased with the hardware included. The MotionPlus experience adds much to the game, making the Wii version of this year's Tiger Woods the definitive version of the game; a rarity on Nintendo's console.

This degree of success should help the piece of mind of developers who may have been afraid of splintering their sales by supporting the MotionPlus. The upcoming Red Steel 2 will require the peripheral; the success of Wii Sports Resort must allow UbiSoft to breathe easier after betting so aggressively on the hardware's success.

Ars Technica spoke with High Voltage software—creators of the Conduit and the upcoming Grinder—about the company's plans to support the MotionPlus in its upcoming games, and they were also banking on Nintendo's success with Wii Sports Resort. "There is no denying that peripherals do fracture the market and because of that, we do have concerns along those lines," David Pellas, director of Game Design at High Voltage, explained to Ars. "That said though, we do believe that Nintendo is taking the best course of action by making the hardware fairly cheap to purchase and by providing it as a free pack-in with Wii Resort."

He was bullish about the game's chances. "This game will most likely be one of the highest selling games on the platform, thereby giving the hardware the best chance to reach many gamers." Now that the projections have proven real, the door is opened for widespread MotionPlus support.