Define commercial success.

As for game ownership I find that debate a bit ridiculous considering where people come from. Game ownership only exists anymore on DRM free games on PC and console games prior gen 7. You don't own a Stadia game any less than a current gen console game.

It's soon to be killed and I believe in ownership. Taking that away is anti-consumer. I will sacrifice convenience for ownership.

It crashed and burned before even launching, and noone is bothering to stop the flaming mess.

Turning into quite the money pit, isn't it?

They screwed up. Game performance was worse than it should be this service should have rivalled next-gen in performance with zero upfront costs. Instead the performance in some areas failed to match Xbox One X.

Any hype was also killed by them destroying their one advantage (no hardware costs) by having the stupid founders edition (£129) be the only way to use the service for the first 6-8 months.

It's not impossible for the service to make a comeback, but they really messed up the launch big time. Should have waited a year.

I don't mind Google and Apple making tons of money off their smartphone/tablet ios/Google play store but I do have a problem when I see them trying to break into the more traditional gaming market. I just don't respect either company compared to the big 3. I have zero interest in streaming games. I was one of first to adopt streaming through Netflix yet video game streaming is far different than streaming a show or movie. I don't see video game streaming making a major dent in traditional sales till 2030 or so.  I'd like to see stadia fail like their Google glasses.

I think Stadia is THE example why an all streaming gaming platform doesn't work from the ground up. Paying Google money to lease a server and paying each publisher money to stream titles is frankly stupid and more expensive then buying a console and games. Just paying for Stadia and buying the games might be an uncertain investment with Google's reputation and in time, a Stadia subscription is not financially more interesting then buying a console.
Sony and Microsoft's streaming services are different, since they can tap into a much larger library of games and already have a lot of contact and leverage over publishers.
Streaming will prove to be just another option next to digital and physical games. Just as the balkanization of video streaming platforms might make buying discs more interesting again.

They going heavy with discounts, which tells me it’s bad and they are desperate to bump their numbers.

It’s just a terrible service to have to pay full price for games when Game Pass gives them to you for just the monthly subscription. No cross platform compatibility like Play Anywhere. No 1st party exclusives that set it apart. When Game Pass merges with Xcloud once it hits PCs and mobile, Stadia will have 0 redeeming qualities.

For me (I bought the Stadia founder edition) it was really just to try and see and I also expect Google to come up with some games only available on their platform, so I'm ready. Games are digital only and frankly I disagree with you that it was much of the controversy (I agree that is an issue overall for some people tho). Game ownership is no different at all than Play Station Network or Xbox digital games and I did / do not recall anything about that being an issue. Personally, I don't care obviously as I am buying all games on any platform digitally.

Now, the 2 main issues based on my experience at least:

- While it is expected to be lagging a bit or that the response time is not like a home console; it was just barely playable in some case. I have a very good internet connection and you could not really play multiplayer shooters on that thing. I own Final Fantasy 15 on Stadia and the experience was okay.

- The second issue (and main issue for me) is that unlike Xbox or Play Station or even the NVidia thing with Steam; you cannot use the local hardware at all to play the game, you are stuck online only with streaming. That's the big no no imo. I love the idea of being able to stream from everywhere if I do not have my console with me... But being stuck with only that way to play my game is not good.

This leads me to believe that maybe (big maybe) Google are going to do it the other way around, starting with a steaming service that sucks and then come up with a "local" console hardware allowing you to play your Stadia game locally if you want without the need to steam. I actually see this as the ONLY way to save that platform... If not, Stadia will die slowly cause there is not way there are going to get ride of that latency. 

Very low chances of success, specially with PsNow and xCloud.