If you are interested in making games for consoles you are pretty much restricted to what the console maker's software development kit supports, which is usually C/C++. It's usually impractical to reverse engineer the hardware and supply your own system libraries in another language.
Computer games are another story, but the same facts are generally true, that you should use the language which provides the libraries where most of the work is already done for you. There are the most number of game development kits for C++, so that's why C++ is popular for game development.
For what it's worth, I have done a few games using the ORGE rendering engine and plugged the game elements (physics, AI) with separate libraries and it has worked fairly well.
"If you are interested in making games for consoles you are pretty much restricted to what the console maker's software development kit supports, which is usually C/C++. "
Post acquisition (by Sony) Naughty Dog seems to have shifted to c++ but seems to have shifted back partially to lisp (C++/ scheme combo as far as I can make out) for their "Uncharted" games for the PS3.(http://www.naughtydog.com/docs/Naughty-Dog-GDC08-Adventures-... Warning PDF)
It is C++. Note that this perfectly reasonable individual choice tend to ensnare us all in a local maximum.
One route out of this local maximum could be CPUs optimized for garbage collection and a high rate of function call. I doubt we will see that any-time soon, though.
META: Why the downmod? I assume it wasn't out of mere disagreement, so I must have made a specific mistake, but I can't see it (I answered the question, then stated an opinion which I think was on topic).
