Well, I suppose my recommendation falls on the original posts demand; to make a 2D game.
If you want to become a programmer then by all means find a language that will allow you access to future advancement and C++ is the best of the low and high level worlds.

If you want to develop games and don't really care about programming outside of that realm then you're going to get really bored really fast and probably never want to get involved considering the amount of extra work.

A lot of people like to tout C++ as the holy grail because it's an industry standard. I think this attitude is strange and preventative.
I've done projects in both C++ and C# and trying to program anything in C++, especially a 2D game, is just nuts when there's C# as a viable alternative.
Just to open a window with the Win32 API takes a good amount of code.
This isn't mentioning interface construction, memory management, even getting input or converting textures takes far more work.
With XNA and C# you just have to create a project and start working on your game.
Also the syntax of C# and C++ are identical in almost everything except setup and a few things here and there like passing by reference, setting inheritence, etc.

Besides, new programmers shouldn't start with such a cubersome language; why do think all the schools are switching over to Java for 101 and 102?
It's easier and is less problematic and easier to explain. Plus it let's the user see cooler results faster.

This is just my opinion, but C++ is a really boring language to learn, but necessary for being an employable programmer.
It is NOT, however, necessary for doing something as simple as making a 2D game.

I hate Java with the heat of a thousand suns.. Aha, get it?

Ok but really, C# is a good choice, though I say learn C++ at some point soon so you can be bitter!