The slightly creepy green graphic shows stairs (one flight leading to nowhere), two floating square boxes and one rectangle, and a person standing at an archway looking into blinding light. 

Could it be that Microsoft’s XBox mobile app store is close to launch?

In May XBox President Sarah Bond spoke during a video interview with Tech At Bloomberg about Microsoft launching offerings to compete with Google and Apple’s app stores.  

“In July we are going to be launching our mobile store experience,” Bond said. “We’re going to start actually by bringing our own first party portfolio to that so you’re going to see games like Candy Crush show up … games like Minecraft.

Sarah Bond, XBox President, in an interview with Tech At Bloomberg.

“And then we’re going to extend that capability to partners so they can also take advantage of it and have a true cross-platform, gaming-centric mobile experience.”

Bond revealed that XBox would start with a web store.

“We’re doing that because that really allows us to have it be an experience that is accessible across all devices, all countries, no matter what. Independent of the policies of the closed ecosystems stores. And then were going to extend from there.”

If you click on the Sign In button this is what you see. Image: XBox.

Which brings us back to the graphic, discovered by an X user. Rich in unknowable symbolism, it can be found at the URL “www.xbox.com/en-GB/mobilestore”. Note the words “mobile” and “store”.

Underneath said art is the headline Coming Soon. 

And then: “Thank you for participating in the Xbox Insiders program. As part of our testing process, you have been placed in a holdback group and currently do not have access to this feature. Your support is invaluable to us, and we ask for your patience as we prepare for the public release. Stay connected with Xbox for further updates.”

Although it was August 1 in Australia at the time of writing this story, it was July 31 in parts of the US, meaning Bond still had a few hours (or in some states minutes) to meet the deadline.