Is the Surface sinking or is it doing great? That’s been the back-and-forth commentary among pundits and industry-watchers over the past few months, with some suggesting that Microsoft’s estimated 1.5 million total Surface sales (as of March) were fairly underwhelming(Opens in a new window) and others considering Microsoft’s 400K Surface Pro sales (across the same time period) as a good, if not “respectable” number(Opens in a new window) for the fledgling tablet.

Even if Microsoft pushed around 9,000 Surface Pro and Surface RT tablets for the first quarter of 2013, says research firm IDC(Opens in a new window), and even if Microsoft was able to earn itself a fifth place trophy in the tablet market for that time period, that hasn’t stopped the tablets from enjoying a few price cuts along the way.

One of the first fire sales hit around May of this year. As reported by ZDNet(Opens in a new window), Microsoft was dishing out Surface RTs and Surface Pros at its TechEd conference for $100 and $399, quite a bit of a difference from the devices’ $499 and $899 starting prices, respectively.

Or, rather, their former prices.

Microsoft is now officially chopping the cost of its two Surface RT tablets by up to 30 percent, depending on the specific tablet. The 32GB iteration of the tablet is dropping from $499 to $349, while the 64GB is getting slashed from $649 to $499. To head off any confusion at the pass, Microsoft hasn’t announced any price changes for its Surface Pro tablets (yet).

To the company’s credit, Microsoft isn’t offering any hints that might otherwise suggest sales of its Surface tablets are lagging a bit.

“We’ve been seeing great success with pricing and cover promotions over the past several months on Surface RT in the U.S. and other markets,” said an unnamed Microsoft spokesman in an interview with the Wall Street Journal(Opens in a new window). “People who buy Surface love Surface, and we’re excited about all those additional people out sharing their excitement for Surface with other people.”

It’s certainly plausible that Microsoft’s looking to clear inventory for rumored updates to both the Surface RT and the Surface Pro. It’s been recently reported that Microsoft’s looking to switch from Nvidia Tegra 3 chips to a Qualcomm processor for its Surface RTs by the end of the year. The chips, rumored to be Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processors(Opens in a new window), would allow Microsoft to bundle LTE connectivity directly into its tablets.

While Microsoft’s been able to dish out approximately one million Surface RT tablets as of March, some – including Nvidia itself – have considered the figure to be a bit of a disappointment. Which is to say, Microsoft’s price cuts could also be its way to make up the gap a little bit.