Also, at this time systemd comes with daemons or utilities for logging, network time, DNS, DHCP, network management, and is poised to act as the intermediary between dbus and kdbus, as well as provide user space virtual terminals.
I am likely forgetting something here, but systemd is way more than a "mere" init replacement at this time.
I think the background for this has more to do with Avahi and PulseAudio than systemd.