We all know that steam allows 3rd party installations like punkbuster or gamespy arcade or VC++ runtimes or DX runtimes. Having driver installations part of the game install could have negated some first time issues PC users saw with rage. If drivers needed more time to be ready, personally I am fine with a delayed game. After all id was one of the 1st few developers to coin and use the phrase "when its done" as opposed to meeting deadlines. id (and bethesda and others) can work with valve (id folks are probably already friends with valve folks) to have certain APIs (if they do not exist already) to detect and install drivers depending upon whats already installed and if an install is needed. Likewise for driver profiles.

Bro, I give up playing games in PC. since few years ago. reason ? the graphic updates. my computer is not strong enough to play. so i decide to change to console platform. it save you a lot of time and money and headache in the long run.

The problem with this is, if you would install the game a year after it has been released then a horribly outdated version of the drivers would be installed. It's easier to just kick the graphic's card manufacturers *cough*AMD*cough* in the ass and make them not release the wrong driver. Throughout the history of pc gaming there have always been terrible launches, but always quick patches. It's kinda a price you pay in order to have the superior version (gfx, performance, SDK)

not really, if you notice i mention a way to detect what version you have, steam already does it, and based on that the installation kicks off or doesn't.
It's not that hard to do, specially when drivers are cumulative and avoid regression. If version 2011 is installed, and version 2010 is needed, then don't install.

Steam already updates your AMD drivers on demand, but they can't write new ones for problems they don't know exist. The simplest and easiest way to find what problems exist are to release the game and see what pops up. Yeah, its a pain and it takes a few days to work out the worst problems, but its about the best anyone can do. Rage just happened to have problems then most.

umm, they are running and testing the game on something before release, nothing special is gained by waiting.
Unless they are testing on imaginary drivers or hoping that someday drivers will be fixed after release.

The driver issue that people experienced, was on the common / latest release versions of both nvidia or ati drivers.
It wasn't some isolated un-popular video configuration.

For nvidia, their recommended driver was a "beta" driver that was already out and not everyone goes to nvidia website everyday to check if there are new "beta" drivers that are apparently recommended for a game.
Majority of the people download and use release versions and generally dont upgrade either unless they are prompted to do so via some means.