The console manufacturers have typically provided a C/C++ compiler and nothing else, so it was very difficult in the past to use any other language for developing console games. Some studios did retarget existing compilers like gcc but it was pretty rare; you don't usually have the time for that! If you're doing cross-platform that then limits your code base, so you can't even use the latest features of a language on one platform but not another (e.g. some platforms don't support C++11 in their compiler).