I use an Arctis 7 wireless headset. If I set it as the default audio device the game crashes on startup. It does not matter whether spacial sound of any variety is being used. It does not matter if the SteelSeries control panel is running or not.
If I run the audio through my monitor speakers (displayport) or through on-board sound (Realtek) the game runs fine.
The problem may be down to the split game/chat features of the Arctis series headsets or simply because the game does not like USB audio. I do not have any other USB speakers/soundcards/headphones to test but even if it only affects SteelSeries products it should be an easy bug to track down.
So if any other users cannot get the game to load, forget your USB headset and use a different audio device
Amazed that this wasn’t squashed at the QA stage. USB audio is pretty common these days.
I can confirm that this caused my crash issue. I would hope the developers get this fixed. I like to hear my games and I can’t really play with TV volume due to different work schedules and when people are sleeping, so headsets are the only sound I can use. Frustrating.
Upgrading to nVidia 411 drivers fixed the intro crash for me and I wasn’t using USB headset. But then I kept crashing in the Winter intro. Then I finally made it into the game after an hour of restarting the intro and crashing and it crashed after I finished the first race.
I am facing the opposite issue, my headset (CORSAIR VOID PRO Wireless which is connected to a USB CORSAIR Wireless Dongle ) works with the game and causes no crashes. However, when I switch to my onboard audio (Realtek) which is connected to my speakers, my game crashes on the “Turn 10/Microsoft Studios” intro video. This doesn’t really hinder my experience by much but I thought it would be worth mentioning.