Adobe Shockwave (formerly Macromedia Shockwave) was
Macromedia's first and most successful multimedia player prior to the introduction of Macromedia Flash (now
Adobe Flash). 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.
See more at Wikipedia.org...