An Interview with Razer’s Director of Marketing, Hilmar Hahn

Razer recently took out the top spot in the Australian PC Awards 2020 Best Gaming Mouse category with The Viper Ultimate.

In all honesty, I’m not even a little bit surprised by this announcement. A friend of mine recently overhauled his whole system and asked my advice for peripherals. I may or may not have suggested the Razer Viper Ultimate for 2 reasons:

a) everything I’ve read about it & heard about it, told me The Viper Ultimate was going to be something special.
b) I wanted him to get it, so I could try it out for myself.

And all I can say is, the Razer Viper Ultimate is an amazing mouse. It has their signature symmetrical design, along with an even higher level quality precision and accuracy. But the one feature that I hope to see continued in all future builds, Wireless!

If you haven’t check out all the features of the Razer Viper Ultimate, see below:

Briefly, after the announcement of the Viper Ultimate victory, I got the opportunity to interview Hilmar Hahn. Hilmar is one of the nicest & most passionate person you will ever meet, he is a gentleman, a gamer & in his spare time, he is Razer’s Director of Marketing for Asia-Pacific region.

DD: Firstly, I have to congratulate you and your team on the recent victory. Taking Top Spot at this year’s Australian PC Awards in the Best Gaming Mouse category with the Razer Viper Ultimate. How did it feel not just win, but also being the only brand with 2 finalists?

HH: We’ve spent a lot of time engaging with the Razer community on Reddit and other platforms to really re-think our roadmaps in the core gaming categories of mice, keyboards and headsets. The mice line-up that we’ve developed together with fan feedback and professional esports athlete validation really speaks for itself. We focused on key areas such as ultra-fast wireless connectivity in the Razer Viper Ultimate and Basilisk Ultimate and lightweight in the Razer Viper and Viper Mini, but also on the quality of life features such as new cable tech, and better mouse feet.

The award shows that we are on the right track and we have a lot more work to do that we are excited about.

Over the last 16 Years, Razer has only previously brought out a few wireless mice (The Naga Epic was my favourite and I had mine for 4 years). What made you decide to, not just bring back an original, but go down the wireless route with it?

There is a huge demand for wireless gaming peripherals from the community. We have been iterating and refining our Razer wireless technology over many years and are proud of the current HyperSpeed wireless generation of mice.

Can you briefly talk us through the typical design process of a Razer mouse from conception to Final Design?

The entire design process for all Razer products is done in-house. Throughout the process, we work with professional gamers to validate and give feedback on prototypes, and at the final stage before production for end consumers is triggered, we do an out of box review from a gamer perspective to ensure the experience for our fans is phenomenal from day one.

Taking the Viper family as an example, in pursuit of creating a gaming mouse that was ideal for competitive gameplay, we started conceptualizing its design back in the year 2017, with early prototypes being tested with professional esports athletes as early as 2018.

Optical switches were also being developed and tested in parallel to ensure its reliability in eliminating unintended double clicks. HyperSpeed Wireless was an evolution of more than a decade worth of R&D with a single-minded approach in bridging the gap between wired and wireless, where we are now at a level where it outperforms wired mice in latency.

We are always listening to community feedback and will be looking into developing new models.

The gaming peripherals market is constantly growing in size with new brands. What do you feel gives Razer a competitive edge & sets Razer over rival brands?

We have a very deep connection to the gamers using Razer products daily. It’s this dialogue that we have with the end users that enables us to deliver products that gamers want to use. And it helps that most of us at Razer play way too many games 😉. We have always lived by our motto, “For Gamers. By Gamers.” and it informs every decision we make.

Razer is a brand that commands a large global following of fans and gamers. From your perspective, why does Razer maintain and how do you continue to nurture such a successful following?

We engage with our fans wherever possible, be it at events such as PAX AUS, or in our Razer Stores when we host fan events (we call them AFK – Away From Keyboard – events). It’s important that it’s a constant two-way conversation to understand what our fans would like to see next.

I always throw in a selfish question. This is normally a cheeky question or a question I’m probably the only person that wants to know the answer to. Will I see a new version of my beloved Naga anytime soon?

We can’t comment on any unreleased projects or products. But the Razer Naga is an essential part of our faming of mice.

Lastly, we’ll finish this interview with the hardest question of them all. What is your personal favourite Razer product and why?

My favorite product now is the Razer Hammerhead True Wireless. It’s easy to use, got tons of bass, and doesn’t get in the way. I use it all day long.

Hilmar, may I just say it was an absolute pleasure chatting with you. I learnt so much from this interview and I’m holding my breath that the ‘no comment’ means I may finally be getting my beloved Naga Epic wireless mouse one day soon! 

##

Want to check out more of my Razer content, why not have a read of my latest review on their amazing Kraken X