Adobe Shockwave (formerly Macromedia Shockwave) was Macromedia's first and most successful multimedia player prior to the introduction of Adobe Flash, called Macromedia Flash at that time. In an attempt to raise its brand profile all Macromedia players prepended Shockwave to their names in the late 1990s. Although this campaign was very successful and helped establish Shockwave Flash as a dominant multimedia plugin, Shockwave and Flash became more difficult to maintain as two separate products. In 2005, Macromedia marketed three distinct browser player plugins under the brand names Macromedia Authorware, Macromedia Shockwave and Macromedia Flash.
