While it's a very powerful language, especially in an unmananged environment, business never picked up on the idea that you need powerful developers to do it right.

They never picked that up for VB but the consequences were less drastic.
As far as I can make out MS are recomending it for Metro, because they have a load of C++ boys of varying ability on their books, and they can get away with having to provide less in the ways of APIs etc. I've not heard of a credible technical reason anyway.

Saying that in the main choice of language is usually decided by the business, and not very often for tecghnical reasons. Usually in house skills mix, languages their current products are in, or the availability of developers.