War of the Halloween Videos: Google Goes for Cute, Microsoft Bets on Horror

I guess there are three ways to approach Halloween: you can go for cute, scary or sexy. Every year, both Google and Microsoft like to produce something Halloween-themed and this year is no exception. As in so many other areas of their competing businesses, the difference between their attempts to bring some Halloween fun to the Internet couldn’t be more different: Google produced a family-friendly video-doodle of its employees carving pumpkins and Microsoft went all out to produce a short horror video featuring a deranged Killer and the popular Kinect controller.

Google’s Pumpkins

Here is Google’s pumpkin video:

(Bonus: here is the behind-the-scenes story of how the video was created)

The Kinect of Horror

When you think of Microsoft, horror and video, chances are you are thinking about the infamous Songsmith video, but its Channel 9 team actually made good use of the company’s in-house video-production facilities and put together a respectable little horror video(YouTube version via WinRumors):

Bonus: One More Microsoft Video to Give You Nightmares

If that didn’t scare you, here’s the old Microsoft Songsmith video (which is almost guaranteed to give you nightmares tonight):