Pong is one of those cases where it isn't the technical "first" of anything objective. It's not the first video game, the first arcade game, the first home video game, the first ping-pong video game, it's not even the first game Nolan Bushnell was involved with. But it was the first arcade game that was a really big commercial success, that attracted leagues of imitators, etc. And the same is true of Home Pong.

Video games are like compilers, or computers themselves - there isn't really a first one. Far enough back, there are things which are clearly not video games; recently enough, there are things which clearly are video games, and in between, there is a parade of things which are not clearly video games or not.

Here's an hour-long, meticulously sourced, rather thoughtful video on the question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHQ4WCU1WQc

(which naturally concludes that video games are a British invention!)

Depending on the definition you use, the first video game was Spacewar! on the PDP-1, written at MIT in 1962.

https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-spacewar-1992412