I totally agree with you on this, it's a common fact with NECA.
Hopefully, huge items' prototypes are built on scale (power loader was too for instance), so the only thing that may differ with the queen will be the paint.
Quite the same they do with the 7" figures : prototypes are made way bigger, unveiled and sold on pre-order like this, THEN scaled down and mass produced. So when you pay, you don't know what you're going to get.
That's why I didn't pre-order the Series 3, I'm waiting to see how Bishop and Kane look like on 7" (Runner alien is already on scale).
And then buy the guy and the android. Or not.