Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first title conceived for the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII was the film Advent Children. It was originally envisioned as a short film presentation created by Visual Works, the animation studio behind CGI cutscenes for the company's games.
Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII was released for NTT DoCoMo's FOMA iMode on the 24th of September 2004. The game began development in 2002 and went through beta testing in 2004 before its official release.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has the highest average Metacritic score at 92 out of 100. It was released for PlayStation 5 on the 29th of February 2024 and sold over 3.5 million copies across both PlayStation and Steam.
One of the main conditions for the project's launch was to reunite the original staff members of Final Fantasy VII including Kazushige Nojima, art director Yusuke Naora and composer Nobuo Uematsu. These individuals were key to the creation of the film and subsequent titles.
Final Fantasy VII The First Soldier was shut down on the 11th of January 2023. The free-to-play battle royale multiplayer game for mobile phones was released on the 17th of November 2021 and set 18 years before the events of Final Fantasy VII.
Multiple staff members including Nomura revealed that the Compilation was only ever intended to extend to three games and a film. The team decided to end the series with the release of Crisis Core to avoid saturating the market.