Against the backdrop of the Racoon City incident, like half a dozen groups of guys move through the town to do their shit. The zombies are just weather; the concern is generally that they'll spread the outbreak and kill civilians rather than pose a threat to anyone with guns. I don't think Umbrella ever tried to market them as a product, because they're just a side effect rather than the custom creatures they tried to make, like tyrants and hunters etc. The c-virus is even more commoditised because it doesn't spread very easily without using actual weapons to expose people to it, so you have to buy more (I guess).
I'm told the final tyrants were quite different from the one in RE1 and were agile and had near human level intelligence, so perhaps the ultimate goal of the program was for super soldiers in a general sense. And not just BIG MAN WITH CLAW,
Are Bio-Weapons Effective? (Resident Evil/Biohazard)
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