You don't need any of those if you are doing a node project, yeah, but if you want to do any work on the browser, you're gonna need to transpile anyway, so it's something people should be aware of.

Plus it's literally a 20 line config file to do so.

    module.exports = {
        entry: './src/app.js',
        output: {
            path: './bin',
            filename: 'app.bundle.js',
         },
         module: {
             loaders: [{
                 test: /\.js$/,
                 exclude: /node_modules/,
                 loader: 'babel-loader'
             }]
         }
    }

Include your app.bundle.js file in your webpage and you are good to go.