Why is C++ so big?

[MrD.]

He is correct though, C/C++ is the dominant language for the game industry. Mainly because C/C++ is just so fast relative to other high level languages, and also gives you a great deal of control over the low level workings; for instance, you can (and likely would for a large game) write your own memory pool and override the default new/delete operators to allocate memory from your memory pool, this is usually significantly faster than letting C++ allocate from the "raw" heap. Also there is the fact that all the major console SDKs are written in C/C++ so it is just expected that you will be using it to program with.

Also, you precious Python usually uses a byte-code interpreter implemented using C:

CPython is the default, most-widely used implementation of the Python programming language. It is written in C.

In short, C/C++ is used because it is fast and powerful. Interpreted languages just cannot match it in terms of that, they do however usually provide libraries and functions that make using said interpreted language easier, which makes rapid development possible. Because of this C#/XNA is a good choice for prototype game development.

To answer your question. No, I don't feel that Python would ever beat out C/C++, because with C there would be no Python. Also AAA game developers are constantly pushing performance and for that they need a performance critical language, interpreted languages just don't fit that bill.