In this work, for exploring the controlled growth strategy of indium-oxide-based semiconductor film with preferred orientation and investigating the effect of crystal orientation on the photoelectric property, nitrogen-doped indium oxide (In2O3:N) films with (222) and (440) preferred orientation were prepared on quartz (SiO2) substrate by magnetron sputtering, respectively. The crystal structure, surface morphology, elemental composition and optical bandgap of In2O3:N films were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometer, respectively. The photoelectric properties of as-grown films with different preferred orientation were investigated. The results show that the nitrogen doping in In2O3:N films with different preferred orientation mainly is dominated by nitrogen substitutional oxygen. The band gap of indium oxide can be reduced to 2.89 eV by nitrogen doping. The In2O3:N film with (440) preferred orientation has a shorter photoresponse time than the (222) one.