There seems to be a problem now with the game accessing the drive to check the list of existing saves, and that could have caused the crashes starting a new game. I'll check and see if anyone has any suggestions.

This is the first report of a crash starting a new game on console, that I am aware of. There were a couple of issues which could cause that on PC (conflicts with too-strict firewalls or the software included with Bigfoot network adapters, freezing due to network driver issues that could be fixed by resetting the network adapter).