In the 80's Assembly was the only way to go, if you were targeting consoles and home systems.
Higher level languages were the managed languages of the day.
When the SDK started to push for C, like on first PS, they were forced to move. Still the code was pretty much inline Assembly wrapped in C, until they were confident to write more and more in C.
Similarly when around PS 3 time, the SDKs were moving into C++, the majority took advantage of the C compatibility and used only as much C++ as required by the SDKs.
Only recently some started to do the transition to embrace C++.
Likewise if in the future language X becomes the only way to target games for platform Y, and they a market that they need to be in, they will eventually adopt it. Of course writting big chunks in C++ until they can be convinced it is ok to just use X.
That said as someone who hasnt done a lot of C or C++, i'd like to think learning the new way is best, otherwise it's hard to know where to start.