> But Lara Croft and Bayonetta were made for the male audience.
That isn't really true, well at least in not the way you are implying. In both circumstances the motivations in development of the characters were to do something a bit different.
> Lead graphic artist Toby Gard went through about five designs before arriving at the character's final appearance. He initially envisioned a male lead character with a whip and a hat. Core Design co-founder Jeremy Smith characterised Gard's initial design as derivative of Indiana Jones and asked for more originality. Gard decided that a female character would work better from a design standpoint. He also cited Virtua Fighter as an influence; Gard noticed that while watching people play the game, players selected one of the two available female characters in the game almost every match he saw. Gard expressed a desire to counter stereotypical female characters, which he has characterised as "bimbos" or "dominatrix" types. Smith was sceptical of a female lead at first because few contemporary games featured them. He came to regard a female lead as a great hook and put faith in Gard's idea. Inspired by pop artist Neneh Cherry and comic book character Tank Girl, Gard experimented with different designs, including "sociopathic blonds, muscle women, flat topped hip-hopsters and a Nazi-like militant in a baseball cap". He settled on a tough South American latina woman with a braid named Laura Cruz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lara_Croft
Similarly with Bayonetta. The guy had made a bunch of games with Male Protagonists and fancied a change by the sounds of it.
> Given the suggestion to create another action game by producer Yusuke Hashimoto, project director Hideki Kamiya decided to create a female lead, having felt he had already done all that could be done with male protagonists. To this end, he told character designer Mari Shimazaki to create her with three traits: a female lead, a modern witch, and to use four guns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonetta_(character)
It very much "damned if you do, damned if you don't" when designing characters because someone is going to criticise you for something or other and assume the worst reasons why you did it.
