Characters vs. Plot

In Orson Scott Card's book Characters and Viewpoint, there's a part where he mentions that a lot of books either focus on the plotline or on the characters. He is 100% right.
Take, for example, The Lord of the Rings. Sure, the characterization is good, but is that really what people think of when they read the books? They're not thinking of the characters, they're thinking of the massive worldbuilding that went into the trilogy. When the fantasy genre exploded in the 70's and 80's, most new authors tried to put an equal amount of worldbuilding into their books. Fantasy geeks like me will recognize the names Terry Brooks, Raymond E. Feist, or Robert Jordan. They all try to pull a J.R.R. Tolkien, with mixed success.
That all changed with the publication of Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. There was some good worldbuilding, but it took a backseat to main character Thomas Covenant and his leprosy. Donaldson changed the face of the fantasy genre, but that change is only really beginning to be huge in the fantasy market today, with authors like David Farland, Orson Scott Card, and Brandon Sanderson. Card became a huge success with the publication of his 1985 novel Ender's Game, a book that focused primarily on the development of Ender. The plotline revolved completely around his growth and development.
While fantasy in the 70's, 80's, and 90's focused primarily on plot and worldbuilding, fantasy took a turn right around 2000 toward having stronger characters. Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy, for example, has a very cliche plot, but is supported by incredibly well-done characters and development of those characters. David Farland's Runelords have a strong plotline, but the focus on the main characters and their struggles with honor and leadership are very obvious.
This sudden change in focus also happened in the younger fantasy novels at about the same time. Characters are a huge part of blockbuster book series such as Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Harry Potter, or Artemis Fowl. The audience demand for strong, believable characters has grown much larger in the past ten years than it had previously. This demand has even started to expand into science fiction, but not at such a rapid rate. You can see it with Ender's Game in particular. But this change isn't as evident, as the main interest in science fiction has always been more in plot and idea. Sci-fi is more plot driven than its relative fantasy.
So the question is: do you make your book plot-driven, or character-driven? My answer is that more success will be found in someone that can not only write a book with excellent characterization, but also with an original and well-done plotline. If you can pull off doing both, then fantastic. If you can't, then write what you're strongest in. If you can do plots better than characters, or vice versa, then go for it. But the current trend in epic and YA fantasy is that the characters need to be very well done with an interesting but not necessarily original storyline. I am one of those aspiring authors that eventually is going to try doing both.