C++ is simply at the wrong abstraction level.
Oh, and I don't want to manually track resources myself, either. But guess what, somebody has to do. And on a game console, that's you. There's not much of an OS to speak of.
You did notice I was talking about game development, right? ;)
Anyway:
* smart pointers don't need an OS.
* for me, C++ is at the exactly right abstraction level to allow me to use only C++ instead of "C++ + other language" or "other language and C for speed". Most C + HLL proponents underestimate the logistics overhead of using multiple programming languages.
I'll concede that as a valid concern, especially for smaller projects where everybody touches many areas of the code. As projects grow, a separation becomes easier.
Add to that the fact that most games need scripting support anyways, and you'll see that the logistics overhead is at least not much different.
The mappings of C/C++'s type system into an HLL is almost intractable. What if there's a union somewhere? You could have distinct HLL and LLL representations, sync'ed either lazily or eagerly, but that's really, really complicated.
Unfortunately, you can only apply "C* + HLL" when there's a nice, clear, never-shifting boundary between the HLL and LLL parts. So, language selection is not a false dichotomy; you really do have to choose "mostly one."
(edit: typo, non-sense sentence. Sorry folks, running a fever.)
We allowed large parts AI/gameplay (not generally what I would think of as "kernel") to be pushed out of C++ into a HLL, and it was extremely painful bringing it back when the performance began to hurt us.
I'd certainly be interested to hear about this, because I'd love to know what the breaking points were.