You can move up the ranks of the Corleone crime family in The Godfather. In the game based on the book and movie, you go from humble beginnings of petty crime and rise to be the most powerful crime lord in all of New York. The Godfather features customizable characters and a persistent gameworld, where your decisions affect how other characters interact with you. Marlon Brando, James Caan, and Robert Duvall return to the franchise to voice characters in the game as well.

The Don's Edition features a more basic form of the gesture-based BlackHand control scheme seen in the Wii version. The game uses the SIXAXIS' motion sensor functionality in interrogations and, to a limited degree, during melee combat. As in the Wii, if the player wishes to lift someone from their knees, they simply pull the controller upwards. Swinging the controller from side to side swings the enemy likewise. Slamming someone against a wall is accomplished by pushing the controller away from the player. Unlike in the Wii version, however, where shooting and driving were handled using the Wii Remote, in The Don's Edition, shooting and driving are controlled using the analog sticks.

Unique to The Don's Edition are the "Corleone challenges". These are time based minigames that have no effect on the story. The player must see how much of a certain action they can accomplish in a given time - such as how many different execution styles they can perform, how many banks they can rob, or many businesses they can extort etc. When the game first came out, the player's scores were uploaded to an online leaderboard.