You Don't Know Jack marks the series' first official box release in about eight years, after YDKJ6: The Lost Gold. The series was almost exclusively for the PC, but the new release has been designed with consoles in mind, while retaining the wit and quirky pop-trivia questions of the famous series and web game.

YDKJ supports up to four players, all participating in a fictional gameshow hosted by snarky "Cookie" Masterson. The show's format is based around asking standard pop culture or general knowledge questions in unconventional ways. Players are asked to quickly decide if a description matches one item (Dis) or another (Dat), answer science questions framed in hypothetical antics of the cast of Jersey Shore, or decipher Cookie's terrible attempt at ventriloquism through dummy Billy O'Brian (which he pronounces "Dilly O'Drien"). Questions are presented in a multiple-choice format, with four answers mapped to the console's face buttons (or the Wiimote's direction pad).

Players also have the option once each round to "screw" another player if they believe they don't know the correct answer. Screwed players have five seconds to pick an answer. If they get it right, they get a point bonus, and the "screwer" has points taken away. After ten questions, divided into two rounds, players take on the "Jack Attack" - where the player who rings in first when two matching words cross the screen takes the points.

New for the 2011 version of YDKJ is the ability for all players to answer every question. Previously, the first player to "ring in" was the only to answer - in the new version, each player answers with the speed of their answer dictating a point bonus. Unlike older versions, questions are not randomized. Instead, the game is divided into 70 fixed episodes of the show, with support for more to be downloaded as DLC (for the PS3 and Xbox 360). Each episode is sponsored by a fictional company/product, which inspires the "Wrong Answer of the Game." This question is, as the title suggests, wrong for the question in which it appears, but does match the theme or otherwise reference the fake product sponsoring that episode. Players who select the Wrong Answer of the Game are rewarded with an $8,000 bonus to their score. The player receives the fake product as a prize as well, which is kept in a trophy screen off the main menu - encouraging replay of the episodes to collect them all.

You Don't Know Jack supports both local and network multiplay on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Network play is slightly hindered during reaction-based games (such as the Jack Attack). Network multiplayer and DLC support is not included in the Wii version. Only two players locally are supported in the PC version.