you'll never be the best there is even for a moment as it were in this industry using BASIC. Even when you do make something great using BASIC you'll end up porting it to C/C++ like Worms.
I'll tell that to the guys who wrote Quake, San Andreas, Battlefield series, Halo, and err... Worms to do away with their basic-esque scripting tools then shall I, or would you like to do it ?
C++ allows you to tap into the newest technology instantly
By writting a .dll that can be accessed from any language.
Look at BlitzMax ... by the time it has a fully featured 3D module capable of Doom 3 quality graphics ... Doom 3 will be 2 years old at least
It can make .dll calls, it can already use the latest 3D engines, the same ones that most professional dev teams use. It's just that they cost a few grand.
when you play an older title that was supposed to be amazing ... you honestly won't enjoy it like you would the latest and greatest ... otherwise we'd just all play Chess or something like it.
I played chess 2 days ago, earlier in the year I did a few hundred online chess games, and I still enjoy Civ2... I have 5 or 6 PC games from the last 2 years and none of them are installed any more.
I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that all the people that I identify as making the best games use C++ as a basis for those games.
I think you have fundamentally miss-understood them and the industry. It's hard to say for sure unless you actually name the people you are identifying - but I strongly suspect that they are A) Teams of people with a lot of talent and a lot of patience/dev time and B) Using multiple layers of development like everybody else is from C++ down to script.
C++ is a core, but it isn't the whole apple.
If BASIC was so great then it would be the industry standard not the point of entry.
Still missing the point I see. C++ is not the standard. If there is a standard at all than it is multi-tiered. Typically C++ or C++/ASM at the low level, and a huge variety of all sorts above that.
If your looking to work in the industry then as I said earlier learning C++ isn't a bad move - but it is neither essential and nor is it where most of the jobs are.