Well I tend to agree with you that from the player's perspective there's little point in merging, say, a sub sim with a flight sim.
From a developer's perspective it makes a great deal of sense, however, and could permit the delivery of games that have more depth and realism and/or deliver them more cheaply.
To illustrate, SoW will include ships and it's as easy (maybe easier) to implement these via a simple physical model as via a series of kludge factors (as in Silent Hunter). The ships will include ship-borne weapons and will have damage models. The ballistics of different shells in air and (presumably) in water will be modelled, as will their effects on armour of different sorts. If you take all these factors together, you're half way towards making a sub sim already. Submarines are just another kind of ship from the viewpoint of physical modelling. AI routines written for such a sim might be usefully ported back into SoW.
So... you're probably right that aiming for some over-arching universal simulator is pointless. The underlying engine should still permit the rapid development of other sims, however. Hopefully, 1C's licensing arrangements will enable everyone to win -- 1C, 3rd party developers and players -- and we can look forward to a new generation of sims of superior quality. I say go for it... the competition is mostly very weak.
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