I honestly don't know what kind of fans they were trying to please with the Revelations games. I enjoyed both games (especially REV2, which has a very nice story and cool characters) but as a fan of both classic and action RE, I find the Revelations games to be quite mediocre when compared to either style. The level design, atmosphere, sense of exploration, etc, is nowhere near as good as in the classic RE games; and the gameplay mechanics are super basic when compared to RE4, 5 and 6 (REV1 has the excuse of being a 3DS game, but REV2 should have been much better)
I'll be the very first to say it even though everyone hates it:
The Rev series is made for butthurt (rightfully, though) Jill / Claire fans that are annoyed that the mainline series have put Leon / Chris / Ada on the spotlight.
RE4 [Leon] -> RE4 Re-release [Leon/Ada] -> Degeneration [Leon/Claire] -> RE5 [Chris] -> RE5GE [Chris/Jill] -> Damnation [Leon/Ada] -> RE6[Leon/Chris/Ada]
Leon: 5
Chris: 3
Ada: 3
Jill: 1
Claire: 1
Ever since the main franchise's "rebirth", Capcom has defiently shifted focus on certain things.
After the critical acclaim of RE4, they added content (Ada's campaign) to it and re-released it in other consoles, then the game sold like hot cakes on everything. RE4's popularity and quality REALLY put its characters (Leon and Ada) on the map.
We got Capcom's first canon animated RE film, Degeneration. Playing ot safe, Capcom goes with Leon's new-found popularity. Oh, and that girl from RE2 I guess. (Capcom literally treats her like this in the film btw) Film was successful regardless.
RE5 tried to re-ceate everything RE4 did but with different characters. The main RE5 character was the "main" RE character, Chris. For some reason, Jill got demoted to a supporting character here. RE5 received a lot of backlash at first from stupid AI to racism to OMGWESKERDIEDWTFCPACPOM. Still, the game sold like hot cakes just like RE4. So they re-released it with new mini-campaigns for Jill.
Degeneration's sequel, Damnation, played it safe too. This time, it featured Leon (surprise) but it also featured Ada, that chick Leon loves from RE4. They used this as a chance to promote RE6, too. (Credits featuring RE6 never-before scenes prior to RE6's release)
RE6, Capcom's biggest game, literally. Who did it feature? The game's biggest characters, Leon and Chris. Leon and Chris was one of the first concepts of the game according to the developers. They wanted to include a Leon vs. Chris scene. At the same time, they wanted RE6 to be well-received just like RE4. What to do? Bring back Leon and Ada! But wait, how do we incorporate Leon vs. Chris into this? Hmm... Then we got whatever RE6's cheesy plot was.
After RE5, fans of Jill were so pissed that she was sidelined. Capcom released Revelations (which was as ACTION and over-the-top as RE4 could get and seriously had nothing to do with real "survival horror"...) as a cash in because Jill's fans WILL buy the game regardless.
After Damnation/RE6, Jill fans were still pissed, especially since Chris is re-starring in a mainline game and not Jill. People were also pissed that Claire suddenly got written-off of the franchise. What did they do? They teamed up! Remember how there were petitions and threads everywhere that wanted a campaign dlc for Claire and Jill being partners (lol)?
We got Revelations 2, which had the ~~~return~~~~ of Claire Redfield, and this is funny, because you can replace Claire with a new female character and everything in REV2 would have been exactly the same - the game also changed Claire's personality all of a sudden, and not in a character-development kind of way. They included Claire because they knew the game would sell with a character's return.
Jill and Claire fans have every right to be mad. Jill was butchered in RE5 by getting her a change of appearance and a demotion, then got completely re-designed in Rev (dat face). Claire was nowhere to be seen in canon playable form since CVX. She was in Mercs 3D tho. Yay? So yeah, they have the right to be mad, but the Revelations series is made to simply feature other sets of characters because they knew games would sell with a beloved character's name despite the minimal work compared to main games.